God Values My Emotions & Other Hard to Believe Truths

My therapist’s office in Ohio always smelled like nature in all the best ways. The warm brown leather chairs were cozy, and to this day I think of healing when I see similar chairs.

Therapy is a lot of things, but I would never use the word easy to describe any of them. My heart was heavy, my mind filled with thoughts that gave me no reprieve. What stands out most even now about that time was the invisible weight attached to my chest, making it hard to breathe. There is a book called The Body Keeps the Score, and I slowly learned the truth of those words in that therapy room at thirty-four years old.

After several visits, my therapist asked me, “Heidi, what if you felt all of your feelings?”

I indicated that the world would crumble under my sadness, that the anger deep in my gut seemed to have no room in my home or my church. Instead of feeling, I had asked my body to hold a tsunami back. This vessel, knit lovingly by my Creator, had become a dam keeping at bay all the emotions I didn’t think had a place in the Christian walk. I wasn’t aware I had built that schema. It was part of a belief system I had picked up along the road of life somehow—even though it did not serve me well, nor did I actually believe it to be true!

I had traded real emotion in for forced silver linings, replaced the true and life-giving Gospel with false positivity.

How far had my silver linings gotten me? How distant had God begun to feel because of those weights I had asked my body to hold? These questions opened more…

I wrote Emotions & the Gospel to begin a much needed conversation around how we as human’s experience emotions and all the opinions we think God has about them. The best conversations start with story-sharing so you’ll find many of my own stories, including the one above, in the book. The book answers some questions and wrestles with others:

Why is it hard to believe that God values our emotions?

Why are silver linings so darn tempting when deep and meaningful often comes from allowing the full breadth and weight of burden alongside hope?

Why do we manage our emotions rather than letting the Gospel tend to them?

Is there such a thing as too emotional?

Why are the tools that stop anxiety, grief, and anger in their tracks so very hard to apply?

What is being human and what is being sinful?

In the book you’ll find:

emotional foundations, to center our beliefs about emotions in the Gospel

emotional myths and partial truths, getting to the root of what’s culture and what’s God

emotional processing basics, experiencing our emotions in the Gospel each day

emotion words of Scripture, words we may have forgotten that serve us well to remember, to see the Gospel brighter each day.

You can also join me for the next 8 months to unpack emotions. From now through May 2023 you will find:

articles each month at heidigoehmann.com on specific emotions - warmth, anxiety, rage, awe, shame, desire, and power - with discussion questions for groups and to bring to the conversation alive in my social media communities

videos on the Heidi Goehmann Writes youtube channel around these emotions as well

more book recommendations for mental and emotional health - fiction, non-fiction, kids, and more

emotion questions submitted by readers, answered on my socials

live readings from the book by me and other friends and readers all year on my socials

podcast and other opportunities with friends and partners advocating for mental, emotional, and spiritual health like the Reflection Mini Challenge with Michelle Diercks, coming Sept 26-30

Will you join me for any or all of the wrestling and unpacking around emotion?

Order the book here:

Subscribe to the website and get the articles here:

Follow on YouTube and socials here:

Join the Reflection Mini Challenge:

More than anything know this -

God values your emotions. He created them. He redeems this too. God looks at them with His eye on restoration, where we often only seek regulation. He is and was and is to come, the Gospel-minded God of all emotion.

Welcome to the world, Emotions & the Gospel! Happy Release Day!