It’s finally here! Untangle Your Emotions comes out tomorrow in stores and online for purchase. Due to my needing to have the book read out loud to me, I haven’t completed the advance reader copy that was sent to me. I can’t write a review on the entire book, yet. Based on having only heard a little over half of the book, I would definitely recommend it.
Untangle Your Emotions, written by Jennie Allen, is written for people who have difficulty identifying, experiencing, or expressing emotions. It’s also written for people of faith who believe that God doesn’t want people to feel anything but love, joy, peace, and other “comfortable” emotions. Others who might find this book helpful are those who wrestle with the purpose of emotions that cause upset.
Untangle Your Emotions is written in a clear conversational tone. While reading the book, the reader is made to feel like they are having a one-on-one conversation with Ms Allen over a cup of coffee or tea. Ms Allen shares examples from her life that are very relatable. She comes alongside the reader and walks with them through this journey of emotions. Ms Allen doesn’t preach or talk down to her readers. She pushes and encourages them to help them through their experiences, which may be similar to her own.
I look forward to finishing Untangle Your Emotions. I will post a full review when I do. Look for Untangle Your Emotions wherever books are sold. If possible, please seek out an independently owned bookstore near you. Supporting a small business is a great way to be engaged in your local community’s economy!
It seems strange to write about taking a Sabbath rest on Super Bowl Sunday. Usually I am in the kitchen concocting dips, finger foods, and sweets. But, not today. Thanks to my eye issue and feeling worn out from having Covid, I have managed to have a much-needed period of rest today. I slept late. I streamed a worship service late. Then, I listened to The Listener’s Bible. It probably sounds incredibly boring. But, it’s incredibly relaxing to me. It’s the healing rest that I need.
Hopefully, tomorrow, I will test negative for Covid. In ten days, I will have an eye doctor appointment. The end of my current medical maladies are in sight!
This is another brief post due to my physical limitations right now. But, as I listened to the television commercials today, I was reminded that another holiday is approaching. On Wednesday, it will be Valentine’s Day. Around my house, it has been a difficult day to navigate.
This began when my spouse and I were a new dating couple back in the eighties. We each had different expectations of what a Valentine’s Day celebration would be. Since both of us are two different people with different ideas and strong personalities, we ended up fighting. This happened so often that we began to call it “The Valentine’s Day Massacre.”
Recognizing that V-Day can be a triggering holiday, I wanted to do a PSA for choosing life. I wrote another article called Walking in the Dark about a month and a half ago where I went into more detail. The bottom line is that you are loved. Taking your life won’t solve problems. It will create more of them. Please reach out if you are hurting.
Nothing profound is going through my mind today. I am still having eye issues, kidney stone issues, and still sick with Covid. These issues have been going on for several days. Apparently, after three days, I settle into a routine. It feels like I have been sick forever.
Life gets like that. I go with the flow. I settle into a routine, until something changes. Change is a scary prospect. It means having to deal with something different. But, right now, I am ready for change.
It’s a bit challenging to blog while sightless. It’s even more challenging to blog sightless with Covid. Today, I am getting help with my blog. I didn’t write the following article. It does express my opinion on self-care. I hear it used a lot of time to excuse indulging oneself. But, that’s not an accurate description of self-care. Self-care is doing what you can at any given moment to be accepting of who you are and loving yourself.
Loving yourself doesn’t mean that you spend a lot of money and time buying yourself things or taking vacations, any more than a parent doing those things for their children. It can be a part of loving yourself. But if it’s the only way you show yourself that you love yourself, then you will become as spoiled as any child who is given things and experiences as a form of love. Loving your child means doing things for them that may be hard for them or they don’t like. A couple examples are setting curfews or making the child go to school. They don’t like those things, but it’s a way of showing that you care what kind of person they become as they grow. Cleaning house and following a healthy eating plan are not “fun” self-care items like mani/pedis. But, they send yourself a message that you believe yourself to be a person worthy of living in a clean house and having a body that will last as long as possible.
I have said a lot already. Please continue reading, though, this wonderfully written article that follows.
“Self-care is often a very unbeautiful thing.
It is making a spreadsheet of your debt and enforcing a morning routine and cooking yourself healthy meals and no longer just running from your problems and calling the distraction a solution.
It is often doing the ugliest thing that you have to do, like sweat through another workout or tell a toxic friend you don’t want to see them anymore or get a second job so you can have a savings account or figure out a way to accept yourself so that you’re not constantly exhausted from trying to be everything, all the time and then needing to take deliberate, mandated breaks from living to do basic things like drop some oil into a bath and read Marie Claire and turn your phone off for the day.
A world in which self-care has to be such a trendy topic is a world that is sick. Self-care should not be something we resort to because we are so absolutely exhausted that we need some reprieve from our own relentless internal pressure.
True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly escape from.
And that often takes doing the thing you least want to do.
It often means looking your failures and disappointments square in the eye and re-strategizing. It is not satiating your immediate desires. It is letting go. It is choosing new. It is disappointing some people. It is making sacrifices for others. It is living a way that other people won’t, so maybe you can live in a way that other people can’t.
It is letting yourself be normal. Regular. Unexceptional. It is sometimes having a dirty kitchen and deciding your ultimate goal in life isn’t going to be having abs and keeping up with your fake friends. It is deciding how much of your anxiety comes from not actualizing your latent potential, and how much comes from the way you were being trained to think before you even knew what was happening.
If you find yourself having to regularly indulge in consumer self-care, it’s because you are disconnected from actual self-care, which has very little to do with “treating yourself” and a whole lot do with parenting yourself and making choices for your long-term wellness.
It is no longer using your hectic and unreasonable life as justification for self-sabotage in the form of liquor and procrastination. It is learning how to stop trying to “fix yourself” and start trying to take care of yourself… and maybe finding that taking care lovingly attends to a lot of the problems you were trying to fix in the first place.
It means being the hero of your life, not the victim. It means rewiring what you have until your everyday life isn’t something you need therapy to recover from. It is no longer choosing a life that looks good over a life that feels good. It is giving the hell up on some goals so you can care about others. It is being honest even if that means you aren’t universally liked. It is meeting your own needs so you aren’t anxious and dependent on other people.
It is becoming the person you know you want and are meant to be. Someone who knows that salt baths and chocolate cake are ways to enjoy life – not escape from it.”
It’s official. I now live in a plague house. Everyone who lives here has Covid. It’s nice not to have to quarantine. When everyone is sick, I have discovered, that it is very much “every man for themselves,” because no one has the strength to do more than the bare minimum of living. It’s not a lot of fun. But, one day, I hope that it will be a memory that we can look back on with fondness. That time is not now.
What I thought was a cold is now actually Covid-19. This is the second time I have had Covid. It doesn’t get any easier.
There’s only one week left to purchase Untangle Your Emotions. Jennie Allen’s newest book releases on February 13. I don’t suggest buying it as a Valentine’s Day present for your sweetheart, unless they have indicated that they are interested in owning it. Buying a book designed to help someone with their problems and giving it to them on a day that celebrates love might cause some hurt feelings. On February 15, however, it is perfect. If Valentine’s Day resulted in hurt feelings, unmet expectations, or angry words, Untangle Your Emotions is fantastic!
It’s another sick day. This time it’s either a cold, the crud, or Covid-19. This came up rather quickly. One minute, I am feeling okay. The next, I am taking vitamins, drinking fluids, and napping in an attempt to feel better.
I wish that doing all of that would make me feel instantly better. I mean, I did the right thing. Why didn’t I instantly feel better? The answer, of course, is because it takes time to heal.
While I am waiting for the healing to occur, I am not a good patient. I want the quick fix – an instant cure. This is a result of growing up in the age of microwave ovens. I was nine years old when my family got its first microwave. What used to take minutes to prepare I could have in mere seconds. Thus, I got out of the habit of waiting.
I used to think that waiting wasn’t too bad. All I needed to wait was some way to pass the time while waiting. Fortunately, I love to read. Reading is one of the things that I enjoy doing. Waiting isn’t a problem as long as I have a book to read.
Because of the ongoing eye problems I’m having, reading isn’t an option for me right now. As it turns out, without the distraction of a book, I don’t actually wait well. It seems like now is as good of a time as any to learn how to wait.
One thing I am doing while waiting is listening to my daily Bible readings using The Listener’s Bible. I access this Bible on the YouVersion Bible app. Since I am in a time of waiting, I was curious to see what the Bible had to say about waiting.
Using the Bible app, I did a search on the word, “wait.” As it turns out, the Bible has a lot to say about waiting. I counted over one hundred Bible verses that talked about waiting.
Since the concept of waiting is found that often in the Bible, it’s probably something that is important to God. If it’s important to God, then I want to learn how to do it. Fortunately, I am in a position to learn about waiting. Hopefully, by the time my eye is healed, I will have learned how to wait.
As I said earlier, there’s a bunch of Bible verses about waiting. One of my favorites is found in Isaiah. It says, “But those who wait on the Lord Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.” Isaiah 40:31 NKJV I am looking forward to getting my wings and flying!
Today I ate at Maple Street Biscuit Company on Barrett Parkway for the first time. My spouse and I had a wonderful stress-free visit. Yes, we arrived before 8:30 on a Saturday. But, I really wanted to be at the restaurant fairly early, because I am not a fan of huge crowds. There were several other parties, but the restaurant is laid out in such a way that I wasn’t overwhelmed.
The food was excellent. My party tried a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit, a cowboy, and a cinnamon biscuit. All were delicious with the eggs cooked to order – no frozen hockey puck eggs here! The biscuits were substantial, yet fluffy. The drinks also deserve praise. The coffee is smooth and not bitter. The fresh squeezed orange juice is a little bit of Florida love.
Our order was ready quickly. The community leader, I believe his name is Frank, was warm and welcoming. Nicholas S. took our order and was patient with a party of newbies that didn’t have their order ready immediately. All in all, it was a great experience.
Journey with Monica 
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