Separating Emotions from Primary Action

In this piece, I will be going over the need to separate what I feel from what I feel like doing because of it.

I have been pretty consistently going to church on Sundays. As soon as I leave, I head to my soccer group and play soccer. Infact this picture was taken at the park I was assigned to check to see if we can play there. We can’t but we have a field which I am about to head to. On my drive over, I was thinking about the message but more so a very staring feeling that I was resisting while at church.

6 months ago, I changed churches after about 8–9 years. The new church is still really new to me. I don’t know many people there but I recently joined a table group. A table group is like a small group of people that meet weekly to live life together by digging into Scripture, hanging out etc.

I started attending this church because at the time I was only watching church online and I was getting to know a young lady from this church. She invited me once and I fell in love with the church. So much so that when we stopped talking, it was one of the important subjects of our post “dead to each other” conversation.

Can I keep going to Rockharbor?

She said yes! With so much joy and delight and I was instantly reminded again of how amazing she is because she prioritized the eternal things over whatever differences we had.

Well I have been going now for 5 months or thereabout since we stopped talking. Every once in a while I will see her car as I park. A few Sundays after we stopped talking, we pulled up to park at the exact same time but coming from opposite sides of the street. Even then, we never sat in the same area or I should say, I made it a point not to look for her in the service. I didn’t want to be distracted. I won’t lie, I always kinda wondered if she came to church and where she sat. I often wished I could steal a glance at an old friend.

For the past 4 months though, I rarely saw her car and never crossed paths in the service. This is an interesting feat because the church is not that big. I often wondered if there was an unfair experience where I am one of few black people in the church and one of the taller people too. Whereas everyone is about her height with the same generally blonde hair. It’s quite possible that she has seen me every Sunday and known where to sit to avoid me and I have just not looked hard enough to know that

That pretty blonde lady over there is E.

Fast forward to today, I got in early ish. Sat down. I didn’t see her car, so I was expecting the same experience as the last 4 months.

Worship, zone in on Jesus, and leave.

Well, about 5–10 minutes in. As I looked at the screen to my right. I caught a glimpse of a pretty blonde lady with a hair flick mannerism that felt familiar. So I looked down in the same glance from the screen and looked back towards the pulpit in such a way as to not give away the fact that I maybe feeling like I may have just seen a ghost.

Deep breath. Deep deep breath. Deep long breath.

It’s E! It’s most definitely E.

I will not spend a majority of this piece describing all the memories and questions and emotions that surfaced.

I was literally sitting in church and thinking about the last conversations we had. How she told me she had a new dress for a date and we could go on one so she can try it out. Except it wasn’t gonna be a date, it was gonna be our last conversation to end things amicably. But we were so close that we could share our thoughts and not filter it for logic.

I thought about all the times that I have driven north through the area of the freeway where she lives and how I remembered exiting to go see her.

I thought multiple times about the few times we came to service together and how good it felt to have a woman besides me that I had thoughts for sensual things yet we could worship together.

In a sense I think this is probably one of my favorite feelings that I look forward to having when I get married.

I imagine whispering my wife in the middle of a sermon that I can’t Wait for her to bend over!

What is intoxicating about that thought is the fact that it will holy. There will not be a stain in it. Just a pure conversation of healthy desire in the relationship context that glorifies God.

The idea that God delights in intimacy and that sexual intimacy is a picture of the kind vulnerability that God has and desires to have with us.

That idea is often lost in Christendom or the perception that those outside of Christianity have. Like the nastyyyyyy in all its forms is very much representations of a Holy God in relations with His people.

I digress. The memories that flooded my mind didn’t stop at the freeway exits. A frequent memory I have with her is my first ever blowjob as I drove. The last night before she delivered the crushing news that I knew was coming. It was the wildest night we shared but I think she knew she was extracting closure from the experience whereas I was being sliced vulnerably open.

She was wild in all the good ways. She had an incredible balance of loving Jesus and striving to walk in the fear of Him with a tender experience and insights into how to please a man. One she was fully committed and giving herself to.

It’s important to capture that in order to make these next point.

It’s gonna take about 2–5 years before I can see her and feel nothing. Or desire to do nothing.

Yet, we go to the same church.

I spent a healthy amount of time thinking about how to exit the service.

Do I want to run into her ?

Do I want her to see me ?

Do I want to share a moment or a smile?

Do I want to make eye contact ?

Do I want to let her go first and I walk behind her ?

Yes the last one might have been a naughty thought but to be honest, she was one of those that was extremely sexy but looked typical with clothes on. Her walking in front of me in jeans wasn’t gonna do anything to me besides maybe allow me steal multiple glimpses of her for her presence not her features.

It feels good to exist in the same physical moment as someone that moves your emotions.

Let me unpack that, moments and physical moments are two different things. We have both existed in the same moments because we are both alive. We have both been under the same roof even if we didn’t see each other. If earthquake occurred, we have probably shared those moments. Physical moment here is where you exist in the moment I. The same physical space.

Someone that moves your emotions.

This is the crux of this post.

The memories, sexual or not.

The memories, Lust or like.

The memories, painful or beautiful.

The memories, fond of or frowned on.

These memories still move on. They still surfaced without prompting. Especially the sensual ones where I am in the middle of attempting to worship and I have thoughts that leak out into my conscious.

I didn’t want that. Let’s even say I enjoyed them. I didn’t want them in that moment. So I can honestly say that it wasn’t something I was doing. It was something my brain and mind was doing without my permission.

These emotions were valid. They were powerful. They were calling for an action.

My body was telling me that I felt good and it wanted to return to that feeling. No doubt those memories encapsulated moments that were good for my hormones, mind and body.

However, just because those moments were good for my physiologically in the past doesn’t mean attempting to create them now will create the same result.

This is the area that I am learning to become an adult. I have a lot of discipline and self control but I don’t Often say no to things that my body genuinely feels was good for me.

I often find myself reacting to memories without control and attempting to create new ones of these strong emotions. It feels good to be overcome by strong emotions.

Others have emotions of travelling and partying and living life. For me, deep conversations, intimacy and mutually enjoyed vulnerable moments are some of my highest currency. I’d spend any USD to exist in such moments. Largely because it’s takes two to share it.

I wanted to bump into E because I wanted to see if she still had a desire to explore and create more of those moments. But here is the truth and here is what I am proud of myself on.

I chose to leave first and head fast out of the auditorium. Not sure she even saw me.

I chose that because for once I asked the question.

Say we reconnected and share these deep moments again. Then what ?

Then what?

I need to answer that before I cave to the primary action or the reaction that felt natural as those emotions surfaced.

I needed to know that the choice to reconnect will lead to a better outcome.

I needed to take the data that I had from our last interaction and decide if anything had changed in order for us to not repeat the cycle.

I needed to be honest with my emotions and speak truth to it. Not condemn it for seeking what it thinks is good for my body. But instead to redirect its longing to the right relationship that can offer a positive response to the question:

Then what?

Then create memories like these for the next 50–70 years.

I don’t have a crystal ball on any new relationship or revisiting old ones but I need to be able to give a solid reason for why “then what?” with ___________ will give me a good chance at a more eternal

bond than a mere short term one.