Worship

Just on our break before communion. Singing with the worship team this weekend. It's going to be short cause I know it's almost time. The message is on Caleb and Joshua this weeekend. Talking about courage.
Sounds like a really good message, I'll listen to the whole message at 6:30pm.

Are emotions learned?

Here's a deep thought for the day: Are emotions learned? I wondered this as I sat and watched the end Disney's "Monster's Inc." with my son and daughter this afternoon. This is a movie that we watch at least once a week upon their request. It's certainly an intriguing movie. The creators of this movie thought well to get into the minds of children and their fear of monsters and make a movie out of it to relieve their fears. Very smart! If you've never seen the movie, the basic concept is a little girl befriending a big, hairy monster. At the end of the movie they part ways as the monster takes the little girl back to her room and tucks her into bed. They have one last hug and the monster goes back into her closet, never to be seen again. The emotioin of both characters upon their departure is sad. I came into the room for the last 10 minutes of the movie, and though I've seen a million times before, I still found myself wanting to cry.

That's what made me wonder: Are emotions learned? My 3 year old son didn't cry, in fact he shows no emotion during this part of the movie. He can tell me that Sully (the monster) and Boo (the little girl) are both sad, but he's not sad. Yet, when one of us leaves for work, or occasionally when we leave him with the babysitter, he's sad and he cries. Same emotion, different situation.

Why do adults cry at movies? At what point in our development do our minds and hearts colide so that when we watch a situation (even though we know it's not real) we feel sad inside and even shed some tears? Are our emotions learned or developed based on life's experiences? Is that what is different between me and Andrew? I've just experienced more life than he has, so when I see others sad, it makes me sad? Which then leads me to wonder why do some people cry so easily and others almost never cry?

A thought for another day I guess!

Conflict resolution

I'm so proud of Eric. This morning he is being recognized at church as a leader. He's really gifted as a teacher and has such a great knowledge of the Bible. He really belongs in leadership. Would he know how proud of him that I am this morning? It's unlikely.

He left this morning as we were attempting to resolve some conflict from this morning and left over from last night. Conflict resolution is something that we've always been pretty good at, but not because of me. That's a strength that Eric brought into our marriage and I've learned from him and I'm still learning. Unfortunately (and I know my mom would agree), the thing that was demonstrated to me as a child by my parents was the silent treatment (from mom) and ignoring the problem (from dad). In some way, I'm glad that I didn't grow up with parents that would have frequent knock down, drag out fights. But in other ways, I wish that they demonstrated a more healthy way of resolving conflict. But enough about my parents. I can't blame them for this conflict or how we're handling it.

What happened was I let unresolved hard feelings fester inside all morning, then when it came down to it, I was so mad that I couldn't resolve anything very well. After some time, we got to talk about the issues. Which, it's worth mentioning that the issue that we're arguing about is never the real issue. There's almost always something underlying that made the issue at hand that much worse. In this instance, I was mad at Eric for not listening to me the last night. Then this morning, I'm sure that I woke up mad at him and didn't even know it. And as it always seems to go, we didn't resolve the "real" issue until he was ready to walk out the door.

In effort to send him off as the proud wife that I truly am, I had to force my emotions to catch up with my words more quickly than I usually do. I didn't do a very good job of that. I said, "I'm sorry and I love you. I don't want you to go thinking that I'm mad at you, cause I'm not." All said with my arms crossed and no emotion in my voice. Do you think he believed me? Of course not. What he said was, "It's about body language, you are saying you're sorry, but you sound like you are barking at me." Then he imitated me and it made us both laugh. As soon as I stretched out my arms to hug him for real, a peace came over us both. That's conflict resolution. Then I could really say, "I'm sorry and I love you and I'm proud of you." And this time he believed me.