I gingerly walk down our water-soaked gravel road trying to miss the areas that seem like soft, muddy sponges. The rain and snow have been so relentless, that every week or so my family must rebuild and fill in certain areas of our road. When it rains at night, we wonder how the road will look in the morning, or if we’ll even be able to drive on it.

I’ve had a recurring nightmare in life that involves me driving on a neverending, narrow highway through the ocean. There are no barriers on either side of the highway, ocean water is crashing onto the pavement in front of me. I’m driving a large van with my family inside. I try to keep it together, but the stress overtakes me and I end up making a wrong move and the van…and the family…plunges into the ocean. I’ve thought of that dream as I drive my family home down our road. I’ve realized I’m reliving this nightmare every day, hoping the gravel road doesn’t erode away so much that I crumble down with the gravel into the creek that runs alongside it! If that doesn’t happen, perhaps I’ll only get stuck in a large pothole!

I approach our bridge that enters the property and notice my husband’s valiant attempts to keep the only way into our property from becoming unusable. Somehow he has built out the bridge with wood, gravel, and large stones to be wider. He lines the sides with a wood log on each side as to be a marker to drivers so they don’t drive off the edge or get too close to edges that are not strong. We wouldn’t them to live out my nightmare!

Since moving to this farm, the Lord has used so many situations here to teach me about the life of faith. One thing that I feel He has impressed upon me is that emotions are crucially important and good…even the hard emotions. There’s something about this quiet farm and private driveway I walk that pushes me to face them more seriously and intimately with the Lord. I wouldn’t give up this road for anything. It’s been a sanctuary for me in some of my hardest life moments.

It was on this gravel road that I learned to put my emotions of fear, vulnerability, and heart-wrenching sorrow into sacrificial packages and hand them over to the Lord. I would give them to Him as gifts. Gifts not to be handled without Him. They were for us to handle and look at together.

I don’t know about you, but it seems easier to grow closer to the Lord in the hard things than when life is easy. I guess that’s because I more easily recognize my weakness in the hard times, so I find myself running to Him continually.

In the past weeks, I’ve been thinking more, though, about the small things. As my friend, Suzanne puts it: mild irritations. Mild irritations that can lead to anger. Maybe it’s not irritation or anger, but a lack of joy or feelings of love for life, worship, or people. These emotions or lack of them aren’t present all the time but come and go, as I suspect they do for all of us.

For me, mild irritations that build up over time are what hinder me the most in a daily way. They really irritate me! What do we do with that? Do we shame ourselves for feeling irritated with our spouses and children? Do we try harder? Do we try harder and do alright for a while, but then it gets to be too much and the bridge that we’ve been striving to keep from eroding suddenly collapses? Or we just can’t handle the stress of keeping it together as we drive that narrow road anymore, and we give up and plunge into the ocean giving up to the turbulent emotions we feel. All of the emotions we’ve been holding back crash through anyway in one outburst. We just can’t take one more thing.

But wait…

What if we treated those mild irritations as being as important to God as the emotions of sorrow, devastation, and vulnerability? What if the inner churning of the mild irritations or low level of love were alarm bells to run to Him? What if I changed my thinking? What if I started to challenge the lie that says, “I can’t handle this.” What if I went from thinking, “I can’t handle one more time of _________,” to thinking, “In Christ, I have all that I need to thrive. He has and offers unlimited peace, eternal hope, and everlasting care. I am a new creation with new desires. I have the ability to say yes to light and life and no to darkness and death.”

The feeling of irritation is not necessarily a sin, but acting out in my irritation or anger is. I can RUN to the Lord when I feel this and ask Him why it’s there. I can pray for awareness and help. I can pray that he will change me. I can say yes to the ways of the Spirit and no to the ways of my flesh.

I look again at the bridge with all the ways my husband has rigged it to keep it up. It reminds me of how I feel sometimes. Like I might crumble away or cave in any moment. I might strive in little ways in my own strength to save that from happening until, eventually, a big rain comes and those attempts fail me.

The reality I need to recognize is that these attempts and riggings really aren’t going to save me. What will, is remembering that there’s something bigger that’s already saved me, holding me together and strengthening me even when I’m at my weakest. Perhaps more when I’m at my weakest.

This bridge I stand on now is held up by two great iron tunnels underneath it. They are massive enough that my daughter just floated through one of them with a friend on a deer sled last weekend. These tunnels peak out of the gravel just enough to remind me that they are what is going to keep me up above the water. The rigging may fail, but the bridge won’t entirely collapse.

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

2 Corinthians 12:9-10 ESV

If we are in Christ, we have access to new ways of thinking and new ways to process our emotions that involve the Wonderful Counselor. We have an entirely new inner dialogue that can replace the old. What are some ways you are bringing Jesus into your emotions? How is He changing you? Not just in your responses to the emotions that happen with the biggest, scariest stuff in life, but those that happen in the “smaller” stuff. I have not perfected running to Him in these times, but I’m working on it over a lifetime!

For to us a child is born,

    to us a son is given;

and the government shall be upon his shoulder,

    and his name shall be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Isaiah 9:6 ESV

I believe everyone should have easy access to encouragement in life. If you’re struggling with feeling overwhelmed with emotions, consider my course, “Overcoming Overwhelm” available here:

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