The Emotions I Never Gave to God
For years, I thought being strong meant keeping it together.
And to be fair, it worked.
The project got done.
The deadline was met.
The program launched.
The hire was made.
The problem was solved.
From the outside, it looked like resilience.
From the inside, it often looked like anxiety, exhaustion, overwhelm, and stress that had nowhere to go.
Nobody questioned it because I was still functioning.
And neither did I.
As long as I was productive, I assumed I was healthy.
As long as I was moving forward, I assumed I was fine.
What I’m beginning to realize is that pushing through isn’t the same thing as processing.
Apparently, anxiety, burnout, and perimenopause make terrible co-conspirators when you’re trying to pretend you’re fine.
Over time, I started noticing the same pattern in other successful women.
The stomach issues.
The migraines.
The panic attacks.
The unexpected meltdowns.
The exhaustion that rest never seemed to fully fix.
Women who looked successful on paper, while their bodies carried what their souls could no longer sustain.
What I’ve also noticed is that even in rooms full of accomplished women, we still tend to show up the same way.
Strong.
Capable.
Successful.
Put together.
But not always honest.
Somewhere along the way, many of us learned how to push through our emotions and call it emotional maturity.
There was another layer to all of this that I didn’t recognize for years.
Shame.
Not the shame of failure.
The shame of being human.
Many successful women carry an unspoken belief: if you’re blessed in one area, you lose permission to struggle in another.
As if a good marriage means you can never feel sad.
As if meaningful work means you can never feel overwhelmed.
As if financial stability means you can never feel anxious.
As if getting the thing you prayed for means you’ll never feel disappointed again.
But life is rarely that simple.
The truth is, we can be deeply grateful and deeply grieving at the same time.
We can be blessed and burned out.
Fulfilled in one area and frustrated in another.
Certain of God’s goodness and confused about our circumstances.
Yet many of us don’t know what to do with those tensions.
So instead of bringing those tensions to God, we judge ourselves for having them.
We tell ourselves we should be happier.
More grateful.
More content.
As if gratitude and struggle cannot coexist.
But gratitude doesn’t remove the need for honesty.
And being blessed doesn’t exempt us from being human.
For years, I thought emotional maturity meant staying composed.
Keeping it together.
Remaining grateful.
Focusing on the positive.
What I’m beginning to realize is that much of what I called emotional maturity was actually emotional avoidance.
The truth is, I wasn’t just doing this with people.
I was doing it with God.
I knew how to bring Him my gratitude.
My praise.
My excitement.
My faith.
My hope.
But I wasn’t nearly as comfortable bringing Him disappointment.
Fear.
Frustration.
Confusion.
Grief.
Exhaustion.
The emotions that don’t fit neatly into a testimony.
The emotions we edit out of the testimony.
If I’m honest, I think I believed those emotions reflected a lack of faith.
So instead of bringing them to God, I managed them.
Controlled them.
Explained them away.
Tried to move past them as quickly as possible.
But over the last few years, God has been teaching me something different.
I’ve been learning to surrender my emotions to Him.
Surrendering my outcomes was one thing. Surrendering my emotions has been another.
Not just the emotions that feel spiritual.
My real emotions.
The ones I’d rather hide.
The ones I’d rather fix.
The ones I’d rather skip over entirely.
What I’ve discovered is that God isn’t intimidated by my emotions.
He isn’t disappointed by them.
He isn’t asking me to clean them up before bringing them to Him.
In fact, Scripture tells a very different story.
David didn’t just bring God his praise.
He brought Him his fear.
His grief.
His confusion.
His anger.
His disappointment.
His questions.
The Psalms are filled with raw honesty.
Not because David lacked faith.
But because he trusted God enough to tell the truth.
I’m beginning to wonder if emotional maturity isn’t learning how to suppress difficult emotions.
Maybe it’s learning how to bring them to God.
And something unexpected has happened as I’ve started doing that.
I’ve become more honest with people too.
That hasn’t always been easy.
Part of the reason many of us learn to hide our emotions is because we’ve had experiences that taught us it wasn’t safe to share them.
We’ve opened up and been judged.
Confided in someone only to have our private struggles become public conversation.
Shared our disappointment and been told we should simply be more grateful.
Expressed our hurt and been made to feel like we were the problem.
Over time, those experiences teach us something.
Keep it to yourself.
Stay strong.
Don’t let people see too much.
And while those lessons may protect us from future disappointment, they also make genuine connection difficult.
I’ve realized that not everyone is a safe place for vulnerability.
But that doesn’t mean no one is.
The more I let God into the places I’ve tried to hide, the less interested I am in pretending.
The less energy I spend managing perceptions.
The less pressure I feel to always be the strong one.
I’m realizing that intimacy requires honesty.
With God.
With others.
And even with ourselves.
For years, I thought hiding my emotions was a way to protect myself.
What I’m beginning to realize is that it was also isolating me.
From God.
From others.
And in some ways, even from myself.
Maybe surrender isn’t just releasing control.
Maybe it’s allowing ourselves to be fully known.
Have you ever found yourself bringing God your praise, but not your pain?