Welcome!

Thank you for joining me here at Emotion Culture. My name is Sara, and I’m going to be really honest with you right from the start – I’ve been sitting at my laptop for an hour (Just today. That doesn’t include the previous 5 days worth of avoidance and time-wasting), staring at a blank document, trying to decide how to explain my WHY in a way that will interest and serve readers like yourself. It’s basically been one continuous battle with raging insecurity.

But I decided a while back that my emotions don’t get to make decisions for me. Especially Fear. I really don’t like the consequences of Fear’s decisions. 

Now don’t read me wrong – emotions are important, beautiful, necessary parts of who we are. They allow us to experience and share aspects of life that none of us want to go without like Joy, Peace, Love, Humor, Satisfaction, Pleasure, Honor, Intimacy, and Thankfulness. They also serve us as an internal warning system to detect danger, identify sources of pain, and provide us with motivation and energy to make changes for ourselves and the people we love. 

At least, emotions do all that for us when we lead them well.

We live in a culture that allows and even encourages us to give our feelings free reign in our hearts, minds, and relationships. We are bombarded with messages, images, examples, and directives from every media source trying to convince us that happiness should be our priority and the way to achieve it is by following our emotions. “Listen to your heart.” “As long as you’re happy, I’m happy.” “Just do what you love and the money will come.” “I can’t, my anxiety is really high today.” “Well, he just made me so angry! What do you expect?”

How’s that working out for you?

Yeah, it’s not great for me either. Which is why I started learning, and eventually teaching, a different way to incorporate my feelings into my life. Specifically my spiritual life since the cultural idea of being led by emotions and the biblical idea of being led by the Spirit don’t work well together. Logically you can’t follow two leaders heading in two different directions, and trying to do so feels like being ripped apart at the seams. Contrary to popular belief, being led by the Spirit doesn’t mean forsaking, denying, or suppressing our emotions. God made us with them for a reason! Exploring what that reason is, what being led by the Spirit means, and how to actually live these ideas out is what you will find at EmotionCulture.com. 

You can expect bi-weekly posts in line with my life vision, “To help people overcome the emotional barriers that prevent them from having their best possible relationships with God and others.” I do this through helping people discover practical ways to apply Scripture to their everyday lives. You can expect me to be honest and vulnerable (like the confession of my time-devouring insecurity attack at the beginning of this post). You can also expect me to be as responsive as possible to comments, questions, and communication in general because I genuinely want to engage with you and help you! 

[Insert obligatory request for subscribing to Emotion Culture by email, with promise not to do anything sketchy or weird with said email, here. And do it in a humorously self-deprecating way so I don’t feel as insecure about asking people to sign up and they don’t feel pressured to do so.]

~Sara