THE ART OF QUIET COMEBACKS: Part 16. The Call to Recalibrate Your Emotions

Part 16. The Call to Recalibrate Your Emotions

A series about starting over gently, honestly, and without apology

The heart of everyone feeds on the experiences we go through. Our emotions are products of our experiences. Many times, we feel we’re strong and okay, but what we fail to notice is the fact that what we went through had a subtle input on our emotions. A residue from the experience has drilled deep into our emotions. You may think you’ve healed, but your emotions have been built and structured in a certain way that affects your thoughts and the way you live.

You’ve gone through several experiences, and those experiences have also gone through you. This process leaves a residue on your emotions, different residues from different experiences contaminating a chunk of your emotions. You think you’re fine, you think you’ve healed, you think you’re still you, but no, the real you has been choked by a pileup of residues from several experiences. You respond to some issues differently because of your past experiences, that’s just those residues screaming or whispering, not you. Those residues are also emotions built from your experiences, and they can be overwhelming.

Dear reader, please note that there is a moment after “the breaking,” a moment after “the reckoning,” a moment after “the invitation to heal” when your heart must be tuned again. A moment when it is highly necessary to recalibrate your emotions because what you currently feel as your emotions are residues from your past or current experiences speaking so loudly or whispering to you.

You don’t need to silence your emotions, nor do you need to harden them. All you need is a recalibration. We learn from past and current experiences, all we need to do is ensure we recalibrate our emotions because emotions left unchecked will become tyrants. They will end up whispering lies that are louder than the truth. They will replay wounds louder than grace. They end up convincing you that your feelings are facts, and your pain is a prophecy. Lies!

Feelings are real, but they are not final. They are signals, not sentences; they are raw indicators letting us know what’s going on within us, however, they can’t explain themselves with grammar, clarity or logic, and that’s why we need to subject them to scrutiny, analyze them, interpret and translate them. We often try to explain feelings through words, writings, actions or art, but they are not the feeling itself. Feelings are meant to be brought to the altar, not enthroned on the altar.

What does it mean to recalibrate your emotions?

This is the moment you pause and ask yourself the questions below:

• “Will this emotion lead me toward healing or lead me away from it?”
• “Is this reaction something rooted in truth, or trauma?”

Dear reader, to recalibrate your emotion is not suppressing your emotion. It is simply a total submission of that emotion to wisdom, to grace, and above all, it is submitting that emotion to the Spirit of God.

Let’s paint a picture of this submission in our mind. Imagine your emotion as a stringed instrument. A violin for example. As time goes by, the strings will stretch, life experiences will pull them. Disappointments will tighten a string and loosen another. The sound produced from that string becomes harsh. Although you’re playing the violin, something in it seems off.

Then, the tuning fork is introduced, and its mission is not to destroy the violin nor the string, it doesn’t scold it, nor does it insult the violin. The tuning fork doesn’t pretend something isn’t off, rather, it acknowledges the fact that something is off and that’s not strange because it usually happens. However, it needs to be fixed and that’s the mission of the tuning fork; to help sound the true note. It helps bring back peace, joy and truth to the violin.

Just as the tuning fork provides a reference pitch for tuning while the musician listens to it and then keeps adjusting the violin’s string until it matches the fork’s tone, so also we must subject our emotions to the Holy Spirit of God, giving us the reference pitch (the life of Christ), and then with His help, we gently tune our emotions until it becomes recalibrated, matching the truth in the word of God.

In conclusion, recalibrating your emotion is not a reset, it’s a return. It’s not a denial of pain; it’s a reorientation toward purpose.

Remember, JS Havilah cares about you, yes, you!

Part 17 (The Practice of Recalibrating Your Emotions) is quietly on its way.

Come back for every installment.
Come back to remember you are not alone.
Come back, not to catch up, but to catch your breath.

Still becoming,

JS Havilah