Matters of the heart are never easy to deal with. The reason for this is because, contrary to what a lot of people would like to believe, you can not control your emotions. Emotions are a result of your environment, personality, circumstances, and events. Not everyone will react emotionally the same, but when you do react, you can not control it. What you can control however, is whether or not your emotions will have a lasting affect on you. Relinquishing all happiness to an emotional encounter can mean the difference between truly living, and just existing in your life.

Let's say that you decide to take a walk one day, down the road, through a nice, quiet neighborhood. Nothing fancy, sidewalks on both sides aligned in front of rows of cookie cut houses with their different variations. It's Fall, so the leaves of the trees are kissed by the many shades of red, orange, yellow, and purple. The air is cool and crisp, and you feel the sun shine on your face as you look up at the Autumn sky. You pass a maple tree and admire it's beautiful bark and the few scattered leaves that dangle from the elegant branches, swaying in the light breeze like wind chimes. You can almost hear music in the wind. Suddenly, while completely in a state of bliss, you hear a cautiously loud snarl followed by the disturbing noise of a bark. Something all of a sudden doesn't seem right, and as your senses tell you to brace yourself, you find yourself staring at a large dark figure quickly approaching. You hear the loud snarls and barks getting louder and realize that you are the target of a very angry and scary looking Doberman Pinscher, who is running at top speed to get to you. Your heart nearly jumps out of your chest as you realize that you have no where to run, and there's no way for you to outrun this beast. You decide to run anyway, but just as you start, you hear a loud voice yell out, “Dottie, get your tail back over here!!” Upon hearing the sternness of the voice, the dog, who is now only a few feet from you, slows down to a stop, stares at you with a look of warning, then turns and runs back inside of the house. The encounter nearly kills you of a heart attack. You turn around and head back home with only the objective to get back inside to what you know to be safe. You no longer notice the beauty surrounding you as you briskly make your way back home.

Now what exactly does this have to do with emotional damage? Well, just like the initial experience of walking through the neighborhood, we also have experience times in our lives that invoke the emotion of happiness, joy, peace, etc.. We enjoy these moments , and in turn, open ourselves up to experiencing more of this. Like falling in love. It feels great, you're in bliss, all seems right in the world, and you open yourself up to receive more and more love. You do it because you want to be happy. Seriously, who doesn't want to be happy? It's great, and we all have been there, but then all of a sudden, without warning or expectation, something goes wrong. The dog represents those times in life where we are caught off guard by circumstances that arise without notice, a situation that jolts your emotions and causes them to quickly go from a state of happiness and positivity to suddenly a state of negativity. It could be anything, a bad breakup, a hurtful betrayal, a sudden death of a loved one, a dog bite, etc.. It happened completely out of your control, and it makes you feel awful. Human instinct tells you that you don't like this feeling and you will make sure that you do whatever it takes to avoid feeling that way again, so you search for warning signs, and make necessary changes to avoid these situations.

Here's where the divide happens. There's a saying that goes something like this, “It's not about the situation you go through, but it's about how you choose to handle it, and the lessons you learn afterward.” There is a positive and a negative path that you can take in every emotional encounter. And just to be even more cliché, it can either make you or break you. Let's take the scenario above. During the swift walk back home, you will be going over the situation in your mind, thinking about how much worse it could have been, and/or how thankful you are that it did not end up that way. If you take the negative effect of the situation, you will never go on nice strolls through the neighborhood ever again, although you loved the experience, and just not that specific encounter. You will tell yourself that, it's not worth taking the risk of seeing a loose dog again, and you will hold on to the fear that if you do, then there's a strong possibility that it will happen again, and perhaps even worse than the first time. You might even get bit! You are traumatized. The lesson you learn from this is that your fear is more powerful than the urge of enjoying what makes you happy. The positive effect of the situation will have you thanking God that you did not get bit and that things weren't as bad as they could be, and that you hope the next time you're out for a walk, that the neighbor's will have their dog inside the house. You may be a little more cautious and take pepper spray with you, or call up the neighbor's and make sure that they keep their dog inside or fenced in or you will have to call animal control. Either way, you make sure that you don't give up something that you enjoy because of something that may very well never happen again. Never let fear take control of your life. When you do this, you are merely existing, and you're not living.

Life gives us all kinds of forks in the road, and the paths we choose, and the experiences we encounter, mold and shape us into the people we are today. Living in fear, and allowing it to block you from the desires of your heart will slowly, in time, begin to eat away at those desires. In the scenario above, you may be the type of person who loves your neighborhood, and chose it because you could see yourself taking walks around and enjoying the beautiful landscapes, but over time, as you let your fear stay in control, you will tell yourself that you don't need to enjoy the neighborhood walks anymore, it's not necessary, and eventually you will be convinced that it's something that you don't even enjoy anymore. In this mode of thinking, you're only deceiving yourself. Deep down, you know that if the dog situation never happened, you would be taking your walks, but because you let fear convince you otherwise, you could very well move into a completely different neighborhood, and never go for walks their either. You are trapped, until you stop deceiving yourself, and come to the reality of “This is what I want to do because I enjoy it and it makes me happy.” And you let go of the fear of “what if this happens, or what if that happens”, because the truth of the matter is that there's a HUGE possibility that the same experience may NEVER happen again. You must choose to be hopeful for experiencing what makes you happy, seeing the beauty in life, instead of being hopeless and choosing to turn your back on life's beauty all because of an isolated experience. God placed us on this earth to be happy and to live, and not to exist in fear. You can never fulfill your purpose, and reach your full potential if you're only existing, and not striving to truly live out the desires of your life!