i've got a feeling

It was about the last ten minutes of the game - we were up by a goal and our defense was doing a phenomenal job of absorbing the pressure that this high class team was putting on them (the previous National champions are not a team that goes down easy) - when i got the feeling. i don't know if everyone gets this, or if maybe i'm a little unique (i would like to think it's the latter, ha), but i knew without a shadow of a doubt that my team was going to win. Some might say it was wishful thinking, and some might have doubted when ten minutes later they snuck a goal over our line, in the last minute of injury time. But i was unwavering in my belief that this team of girls that i had watched practice, battle and succeed all year would pull of the victory and make it into the National finals. 30 minutes of extra time and 10 rounds of shoot outs later... we pulled it off.

The next day was the National finals. It was against our rivals, on their field and in front of their fans, but we were pretty much considered a local team as well which meant a bunch of our classmates and friends were making the drive to support us. That morning as we prepared, i searched for that feeling again but it wasn't coming. At times i believed that it was there, but it wasn't the firm, unwavering feeling of success that i had felt during the previous game. i wanted to believe so bad that i was feeling it, but instead i ended up feeling defeated as we went down 3-0 in our last game of the season. It was a bitter ending to an otherwise fantastic season.

Fast forward a week to when i got a text from a guy that i thought had given up pursuing me weeks ago. i guess he was paying attention when i said that my life would be crazy until after Nationals. It was an out-of-the-blue text in the midst of an already emotional-charged weekend and i was pretty rattled. As i searched for words to respond with, there i was again looking for that deep, satisfied feeling that i was putting the right words to paper (or i guess in this case, typing the right letters on the keyboard), but no feeling came. The next morning as i sat in church as the pastor talked about baptism (which, for what i paid attention for, was actually a fantastic sermon), i remember a quote from one of my absolute favorites, C.S. Lewis, on the topic of feelings: "though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not." i know in a way this has nothing to do with the situation i'm describing, but it reminded me of the fact that i rely too much on feelings sometimes. i am a self-proclaimed feeler which means that i take everything personally and feel out every possible situation as i'm making decisions, and often this leads to a lot of confusion and a lot of deep, heartache because i take on problems that aren't mine to take on, or that don't even exist at all (i'm just making them up).

Instead of relying on a feeling, sometimes i need to rely on other things - more stable things like prayer and processing through things with friends. i believe that feelings are there to guide us but they aren't always the most helpful or the most reliable things. Instead i need to dig deep into prayer, in God's word and in silencing my heart in front of Him to learn His will. There's a time for everything, as Solomon said, and i fully believe this means that there are times when God will give us good, healthy feelings and other times where we need to discard our ever-changing and wavering feelings and resort on things with a stronger foundation, namely not a human foundation.