The Holiness of What We Feel: Meeting Jesus in Our Emotions

by Lori Wilson

There are times when certain emotions become overwhelming, and I find myself needing help to understand them and to move through them with grace. In those moments, I try to remember a distinction that creates breathing room: I experience emotions, but I am not the emotion itself. I am experiencing sadness; I am not sad. I am feeling anger; I am not an angry person.

This small shift in language matters. It helps me allow emotions to come and to go, like weather moving through, rather than settling in permanently. And while I genuinely enjoy experiencing joy, happiness, and feeling connected, I really do not enjoy experiencing sadness, frustration, or anger. If I'm honest, I'd prefer to skip right past those uncomfortable ones.

But they show up anyway.

Sometimes I'm not even sure what triggered the emotion. It seems to hit me from out of nowhere—a sudden wave of grief during an ordinary afternoon, frustration that rises too quickly over something small, anxiety that wraps around my chest for no clear reason. It takes a lot of self-reflection to get underneath the feeling, to begin to see where it's coming from and to find a way through and out of it.

In these moments, I turn to Jesus.

I remember the times when he expressed emotions that echo my own. I think of him weeping when Lazarus died—not polite tears, but the kind of weeping that makes your shoulders shake and your breath catch. The Greek word used there suggests a deep, visceral grief. Jesus didn't distance himself from the pain of loss. He let himself feel it fully, even though he knew he was about to raise Lazarus from death.

I think of him angry in the temple, turning over tables, making a whip of cords, crying out about what should be a house of prayer becoming a den of thieves. His anger wasn't careful or controlled. It was righteous and real and embodied.

And I remember how he withdrew to lonely places to pray, how he went up the mountain by himself, how he sent even his closest friends away so he could be alone with God. I imagine he might have felt overwhelmed by what he was experiencing—the constant demands, the misunderstanding, the weight of what lay ahead. He needed time and space to be with his Father, to pray through what he was feeling, to find his center again.

Realizing that Jesus felt what I feel helps me see that my emotions are holy. They exist. They're part of being fully human, which Jesus was. And I am not alone in them.

Jesus didn't transcend emotions or rise above them through spiritual practice. He entered into them. He brought them to God. He let them move through him without letting them define him. He shows me that the spiritual path isn't about achieving some emotionless state of constant peace, but about learning to be present to what I'm feeling with God's companionship.

So when that wave of unnamed sadness hits, I try to remember Jesus weeping. When frustration burns hot in my chest, I remember Jesus's righteous anger. When I feel the need to step away from everything, I remember Jesus withdrawing to pray. And I do what he did: I bring it all to God.

Not to fix it immediately. Not to spiritualize it away. But to be with God in the middle of it, trusting that these emotions—even the uncomfortable ones—are part of my sacred humanity, part of how I'm made in the image of a God who feels deeply too.

Reflection Questions:

• Which emotions are hardest for you to allow space for? What might it mean to experience them rather than become them?

• When have you seen Jesus's emotional life reflected in your own? How does knowing he felt what you feel change how you view your emotions?

• What would it look like to bring your most uncomfortable emotion to God this week, not to fix it but simply to be with God in it?

A Prayer for the Holiness of Feeling

Jesus who wept, Jesus who burned with righteous anger, Jesus who needed to withdraw and be alone—

Thank you for showing me that my emotions are holy, that feeling deeply is part of being human, the way you intended.

When sadness overwhelms me, help me remember you weeping. When anger rises too fast, help me remember the tables you overturned. When I need to step away, help me remember the mountains you climbed alone.

Teach me the difference between experiencing what I feel and letting what I feel define me.

I bring you now what I'm afraid to name, what rises without warning, what I wish would pass more quickly.

Be with me in it. Help me be present to it. Show me what it has to teach me.

And when it's time, help it move through like weather, knowing something new will arrive in its wake.

Amen.