Alianore Smith writes about - Extending grace in the face of feelings
Recently, I’ve been thinking about feelings.
More specifically, I’ve been thinking about the size of feelings.
More specifically still, I’ve been thinking about the size of my toddler’s feelings.
You see, my son has recently graduated from his ‘potato era’ (baby) into his ‘chaos monster era’ (toddler), and with this comes experiencing feelings like disappointment and frustration for the first time. I’ve spent a lot of time marvelling at the sheer size of these feelings.
This article is from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity section on Connecting with Culture
Initially, I wanted to tell him to get over them. Realistically, the hoover going away after post-dinner clear up is not a reason to burst into tears, as far as I’m concerned.
But then something my husband said got me thinking: ‘that’s a very big feeling for such a small person.’
And so, I’ve reframed how I think about his feelings: what if every feeling is the same size for everyone, adult or child? What if disappointment, frustration, sadness, anger are all the same size and as adults we just have more room for them in our body? Toddlers are only little. So even though I could very easily hold within myself the disappointment of the hoover going away after dinner, my little boy can’t. That feeling of disappointment just doesn’t fit… so it falls out of his face. And if he’s already got a feeling of tiredness or hunger in his body, there’s even less room for that disappointment feeling, so it falls out of his face louder and faster.
It's kind of ridiculous, I know, but it’s enabled me to give him the grace I initially struggled with.
When we spend most of our time around the same people – whether that’s our children, our housemates, our colleagues, or our friends – feelings can often be magnified and exposed. They can be channelled into seeming overreactions, and we can see others (or find ourselves) falling into patterns of expressing emotions that are unhealthy or unhelpful, perhaps acting like a toddler whose beloved hoover has just been put away.
What would it look like, wherever we find ourselves and whoever we find ourselves with over this coming week, to offer the same amount of grace to one another with our feelings (whether they are falling out of our face or not) as a mother is (mostly) able to offer her disappointed, sobbing toddler. And, if we’re honest, that God – who draws us to himself with ‘loving kindness’ (Jeremiah 31:3) – incessantly offers us as well?
Alianore is a writer and associate speaker for LICC and Church & Community Mobilisation Manager at IJM UK
This article is from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity section on Connecting with Culture