Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: RELEASE (08/02/18)
-
TITLE: Finding Peace | Previous Challenge Entry
By Vicki GRECH
08/04/18 -
LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE
SEND A PRIVATE COMMENT
ADD TO MY FAVORITES
In today's world life is filled with so much more burden than I can ever remember! If I had to carry around all this burden on my own I really think I would go quite mad. Life is so much more complex now, and of course we are so time poor these days, too much to do and too little time to do it in.
I attended Sunday school when I was a kid growing up and when I saw this week's challenge topic of "release" my thoughts automatically jumped back to my Sunday school days. I remembered our Sunday school teacher teaching us about a passage in the Bible about how we can lift our burdens up to God and they will be made lighter for us. (Mathew 11:28). I thought this was pretty cool and still do, as a kid I came up with a way of actually doing this in a physical sense and I still do it today.
Releasing burden to God is really in many ways a bit of an abstract task, and people generally find the abstract difficult to comprehend let-a-lone see it as a tangible force. So, I developed from childhood the plasticine idea, and it worked very well, it was also fun, and of course it achieved my goal. If I got upset I would grab the plasticine, roll it up slowly and pretend I was putting my distressed emotions inside of it. Once I did this I would continue to simply roll it around in my hand slowly.
The next task was to think of a great place to toss it back to the world because I decided I didn't need these emotions that made me feel so sad. Usually I would choose the back yard as my tossing place and simply stand there saying to God; "well, here it comes God, it is all yours, because I don't need these horrible feelings', and I would toss it as hard, as high and as far as I could away from me. It felt so good!
As an adult, I had to modify my simplistic child-like way of releasing negative emotion or feelings. I found a way to do this using my mind. Using imagery I would imagine the plasticine, and start rolling it in my hand. With loads of practise I finally managed to master it mindfully. Occasionally though, I do what I used to do as a child because it brings back fond memories of the innocence of childhood and the joy I felt when tossing my sad emotions to God to make happier ones for me.
Releasing unpleasant and sad feelings is a task I ensure I do each day using my plasticine therapy model. I also realised as I got older how important all types of arts and crafts are to human health, especially mental health. I found that through crafts such as sewing, knitting, colouring and drawing I was able to channel-out and release the emotions of each day, especially the negative ones and again find peace.
Jesus used meditative prayer as a means of releasing or channelling-out his emotions, he found comfort and peace through this process. Jesus often preferred to be alone during these times so he could release his feelings and talk to God freely in the privacy of his own mind, body and spirit without distraction from others. Daily devotion through meditative prayer is also a great way I utilise in finding down-time or me-time in order to release my feelings in a different way and providing me with a sense of inner-quietness, calmness and peace in such a high pressured and fast paced world that seems to me to be out of control.
The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.
If you died today, are you absolutely certain that you would go to heaven? You can be right now. CLICK HERE
JOIN US at FaithWriters for Free. Grow as a Writer and Spread the Gospel.