Your Emotions Are A Thermometer, So Check Your Temp

Do you ever stop halfway through the day just to discover that an avalanche of emotions has been burying you? 

I do. All the time. Did it yesterday, in fact. 

I made it halfway through the day before coming to a hard stop in order to ask, “Why do I feel panicked? Frantic? Angry?”

Sometimes we treat feelings as the problem that needs to be solved. Just calm down, diffuse your anger, and smile a little more and it’ll be fine. But we ignore an important detail in doing that: emotions don’t create themselves but are symptoms of something deeper. 

Going a step further, emotions are a thermometer, a great measurement of our mental state. They give insight into the condition of our hearts and minds. 

If you went to the emergency room with an incredibly high fever, no nurse is going to put their hand to your forehead and comment, “Wow! You’re burning up. You should probably fix that.” No – they are going to read your temperature on a thermometer, assess, and create a plan of attack to get your fever down. 

We need to treat our emotions in exactly the same way. They are clues on the surface that provide us a glimpse into what’s truly going on. 

Let’s take the panicked, frantic state I can often find myself in. I could choose to berate myself for feeling that way…OR I could actually take a second to assess. When I assess my frantic state, I almost always come to the same conclusion: I need more time rooted in the Word of God, I need a glass of water, and I probably need to go get a workout in.

What are your emotions trying to tell you? Are you listening? They are the overflow of what’s going on inside, the thermometer showing us the state we’re in. Dig deeper.