Unclutter Your Soul: A 7-Day DevotionalSample

Know Your (Emotional) Age

When I was a teenager, it wasn’t beyond me to, occasionally, lie on the kitchen floor and cry, like a little kid who didn’t get their way. I’d feel overwhelmed and it’s almost like I’d become overwhelm personified. Those memories are fuzzy to me, and I’d rather not remember. However, there are people who do remember and there is a photo to prove it. My cousin once said, “Trina, you’re so dramatic!” I remember piping back, “No, I’m not!” with my trademark eye roll and probably a stomp to prove her wrong.

And then I grew up. 

Kind of.

It’s easy to believe you are grown up when you reach a certain age and begin to pay bills, hold a job, get married, and have children of your own. However, now that I am a grown-up, I ascertain that age is no indication of maturity. Emotional maturity has nothing to do with chronological age. 

I did not come to this conclusion when I reached a certain number of years. I came to it by way of a meltdown. Not mine this time—my daughter’s. Children are an excellent mirror.

Ella and I are very different and very much the same. Watching her grow up has gifted me the ability to learn a lot about myself that I did not, could not, see in my younger years. Ella has taught me that dramatic is not bad. Dramatic is passionate, lively, expressive, artistic, colorful, and, yes, entertaining. Like me, when Ella becomes overwhelmed, her emotions become larger than life and cloud up every inch of logic. However, when emotions are in check, Ella and I are quite logical, commonsense kind of gals. In elementary school her dramatic personality was evident among her peers. It was cute. It was impressive. Her little kid meltdowns were just that—little kid meltdowns.

But then one day, when she became a teenager and was having a not-so-little meltdown—emotions whirring like the engines of a jet plane—I tried to calmly talk her down (even as my emotions began to whirr). I gave logic. I validated. I offered help. I shared options. All the while she was spiraling, spinning, panicking.

She ended up on the kitchen floor.

I stood, openmouthed, in a stupor.

Not at Ella.

Of course, I was watching her—the intense show—but it was as if I was looking beyond her and back at myself.

It was a crystal-clear reflection of me. Suddenly I knew something I had never known before.

My emotional age was that of a teenager.

I had never learned to regulate my emotions.

The meltdowns of my recent adult years have been steeped in pain and what has often felt like disregard. Many have, indeed, included the floor—the bathroom or closest floor to be exact. At some point I stopped crying out in the kitchen and began retreating to my closet.

In the closet it would begin with a pity party and then a good long cry. I’d empty my soul and sit in stillness, and in that stillness the Lord would deal with me. In a most loving way, He would parent me. In the stillness and quiet, He would give me a clear view of the clutter. It was never about the clutter of the person that wounded me; it was always about my own soul clutter. My hurt. My response. My choice to heal and grow or to stay imprisoned and become bitter and angry.

Do you find yourself reverting to the behaviors of a certain age when facing a trying moment? When wounded and disregarded I have a tendency to act like a sulking teenager. This is the age and stage I found myself stuck in. I know adults that respond and react like a toddler when they are overwhelmed by emotions, stress, or life in general. I imagine you do too. It’s easy to judge, until you take the speck out of your own eye and take a good look in the mirror.

But as you look in the mirror, don’t judge yourself either. Rather, look into the mirror and observe the eyes looking back at you—your very own. Can you find compassion for yourself?

Once I get past the signs of aging on my face and look into my own eyes, I always see the passionate, bright-eyed girl I was created to be. She’s still there. Can you see the person you were created to be?

We are doing the inner work, the unlayering, and the uncluttering, to get to that person. That’s the person (the soul) the Holy Spirit will parent into a powerful son or daughter of God.

Respond

What is your emotional age? 

Describe a difficult time emotionally when you listened to the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Prayer

Lord, I want to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit in all situations.