Painful feelings
These days, I am reading a book called “How We Love: Discover Your Love Style, Enhance Your Marriage” (by Milan & Kay Yerkovich) before going to bed at night. Since I received this book as a gift, I have been reading it every night before going to bed. There are sentences that make me think and reflect on myself. I would like to share one paragraph and think about it a little:
“Throughout this book we will see why the ability to appropriately express a full spectrum of emotions is so important. The fact is that, when Susie marries, she will have a huge advantage over those people who didn’t learn to feel and deal when they were growing up. Susie will know how to manage rather than avoid painful emotions. Children raised in homes like Susie’s learn through their experiences to have good listening skills and to draw out the opinions and feelings of others. As adults, they are open, vulnerable, and comfortable with disclosure. They have interpersonal skills and are able to negotiate mutually satisfying solutions to problems.”
As I read this passage last night, I wanted to meditate and reflect more deeply, so I took a picture with my phone camera and sent it to myself via KakaoTalk. Then, I sat down at my desk in the pastor's office at church this morning and am writing this. I just write down the thoughts that God gives me, one by one:
1. I think I suppressed my personal painful feelings rather than expressing them as I grew up. When I look back on the painful feelings I had while living in Korea at that young age, I can think of three main emotions: one is when my parents had a big fight (I was probably in the 4th grade at the time, and I still vividly remember one scene where my father and mother had a big fight), another is when a student who was taller and bigger than me in elementary school (I still remember his nickname, ‘Big eyes’) hit and bullied me, and the other is when I saw my father being grabbed by the collar by another adult man and not reacting at all. If I were to think about the three feelings I felt at that time and talk about them now, I would say in one word that they were painful feelings (of course, I don't have those feelings right now).
2. Then, when I was 12, I immigrated to the United States with my parents and siblings, and I had a hard time adjusting to American culture because I didn't even know the English alphabet and had come to a country other than Korea as an adolescent. What I still vividly remember is that when I came to the United States and entered the 6th grade of elementary school again (I had already graduated from 6th grade in Korea), my American teacher introduced me to a Korean student who was good at English, and I remember that student served as interpreter) and I said that I would memorize 20 English words and take a test the next day. That night, I came home (I remember my fourth uncle living alone in an apartment where my family temporarily stayed) and cried while memorizing all 20 words (my mother still remembers me crying that day). So, the next day, I went to school and tried to take the test, but the American teacher told me, ‘You came yesterday, so you don’t have to take the test.’ I can’t erase this memory from my head. I think it’s because I was so shocked that I cried. If I look back now, I can say that my emotions at that time were ‘shocked emotions.’
3. That’s how I started my life in the US. When I was in the 11th and 12th grade of high school, I started hanging out with my friends, drinking, smoking, going to parties and dancing. Then, out of curiosity, I even tried drugs. Meanwhile, I went to church every Sunday and worshiped. What I felt during that time was a ‘guilty feeling’. Growing up as the son of a Korean Presbyterian (Hapdong) pastor, and hearing some of the church members at the Korean Sang Hyun Church call me a ‘little pastor’ when I was in elementary school, I came to the US and lived my life doing so many bad things while only attending worship on Sundays, so naturally my conscience tormented me. But the guilt I had felt so strongly seemed to have faded away as time passed. Later, two friends were shot to death, and I remember going to their funeral and crying because I was so upset. Then, I became a ‘little philosopher’ and asked myself two questions countless times: (1) ‘What is the purpose of life?’ (2) ‘Where is the joy of life?’ The books I read at that time were those of philosopher Hyung-seok Kim and Dong-gil Kim. My feelings at that time could be described as ‘confused emotions.’
4. In the midst of all this, I felt bitter toward my father because I wanted to have a father-son relationship with him at home, and I was not satisfied at all. At that time, my feelings were ‘wounded emotions.’ I remember David A. Seamands, a former missionary to India, saying in his book ‘Healing from Wounded Emotions’ that ‘wounded emotions’ are one of the most common emotions, the inability to recognize one’s own worth. So, I became, as Seamans puts it, a person who is constantly anxious, who feels inadequate, who has an inferiority complex, who always tells herself, ‘I’m no good.’ And I had what he called a “perfectionist complex,” which made me always searching, always striving, always feeling guilty, always feeling like I have to do something. On top of that, I had another damaged emotion, which he called “super sensitivity.” But then I realized that I was, as Seamans puts it, always deeply hurt. At that time, my feelings were ‘wounded emotions’. In particular, when my parents fought with each other, I really hated how my mother kept bringing up past events to my father. At that time, I felt anger and feelings of hate toward my father.
5. Then, when I was in college, by the grace of God, I changed my major to “psychology” to believe in Jesus and to become a pastor as I was called by the Lord. Then, I learned three words that described the emotions I experienced well: (1) Rejection, (2) Repression, (3) Suppression. “The main difference between repression and suppression is that repression is generally considered to be an unconscious process, while suppression is a conscious process” (Internet). When I was in college, I had a crush on two girls (sisters in the Lord) and was ‘rejected’. And then I had a crush on another girl (sister) for about a year and ended it by myself. Haha. What I mean is, unlike the other two girls, I couldn’t even confess my feelings for them. I just had feelings for her by myself and I don’t remember what happened, but I ended it by myself. Haha. At that time, my feelings were ‘suppression’. I had consciously suppressed my feelings. Because of that, I unconsciously suppressed my feelings and spent my college life as if I had become accustomed to reacting to my feelings since I was young. In particular, I was very lonely during my first and second years of college. I still vividly remember sitting alone on a bench under a big tree in a park in the middle of the campus, often singing the gospel song ‘Someone is Praying for You’ and crying a lot. I missed people so much at that time. My feelings at that time were “lonely feelings” and “sad feelings.” However, by God’s grace, I started serving as a staff in a Christian club in my third year of college. At that time, I was happy to meet many people I had missed, but I felt like I had hurt them, so I would go to the dorm (an apartment within the school) and repent and pray to God for forgiveness. My feelings at that time were “guilty feelings.”
6. I entered theological seminary right after graduating from college. Studying was too hard for me. But the senior pastors elected me as the president of the Korean club. I didn’t want to, but I had no choice but to serve as the president. So I reluctantly participated in the morning prayer meeting because I thought I had to set an example as the president. At that time, I felt ‘guilt’.
7. After graduating from a theological seminary, I met my current wife Jane by God’s grace and got married. Then God gave us our first child, “Juyoung” (meaning: Glory of the Lord) (English name is “Charis” meaning “grace”), but the baby was born with a disease and eventually died in my arms after 55 days. After that, I suffered from a severe sense of guilt for over a year. The reason was that I thought Juyoung (Charis) died because of my sins.
8. I met my wife Jane with these feelings, got married, and have been married ever since. Next April, we will have been married for 28 years. But when I look back on our married life, we had a lot of conflicts for about 20 years since we got married. The reason is, as my wife has said many times, ‘We are very (so) different.’ Where in the world would there be a couple where a man and a woman are not different? They are all different. However, I think that we had marital conflicts because we couldn't accept each other's differences, and we couldn't love and accept each other as we are, even though we had differences.
9. What I want to focus on here is that in the book I’m reading right now, “How We Love: Discover Your Love Style, Enhance your Marriage,” the author says that I (and I think my wife) never learned to manage rather than avoid painful feelings. In fact, I never learned how to deal with the feelings I felt growing up. The only way I knew how was to suppress and repress my painful feelings. That’s how I lived, so that’s what I was most comfortable with.
10. In particular, I suppressed and repressed my anger towards my wife, so I thought that I was holding back and not getting angry at her (of course, there were many times when I was so angry that I expressed my anger), but when my wife said to me, ‘You are angry inside,’ I realized that I had “inner anger” (I am grateful to my beloved wife). And another thing I learned from my wife is that I have a “passive-aggressive tendency.” That is why the aftereffects [definition: “the feelings that still remain after there have been bad feelings” (Naver Dictionary)] after our fights were no joke (severe). And I mostly avoided marital conflicts. I was so confused about how to solve them. And I had been suppressing and repressing my own emotions, so when I felt those emotions in my married life, I didn't know what to do, so I continued to suppress and repress them as I had always done. In short, I had never properly and correctly learned how to manage my painful emotions, so I continued to avoid them. However, when I looked back, I found it strange that my wife would express her anger when we had a fight and then never let it go. Haha. I don't want to mention my wife's 'painful feelings' that I see as her husband. Although if I share her painful feelings (it's better for her to share them than for me to share them), I will be able to understand our conflicts more fully because of the emotions we felt as a couple growing up before we got married. But I was hurt at that time (wounded emotions). So once I honestly told my wife, 'What you said to me made my heart feel like it was stabbed with a knife.' Do you know what my wife said to me? 'Thank you for telling me.' Hahaha. [At that time, when I heard those words, I thought to myself: (1) ‘How can I respond by saying thank you for saying that?’ (I thought my wife would say ‘I’m sorry’), (2) ‘Why didn’t I tell my wife when I was hurt (by her words) like I did today?’ I felt very(?) regretful. Hahaha.
11. Since the writing is quite long, I will stop here talking about my personal painful feelings, and then I would like to talk about how the Lord brought out all of these painful feelings, comforted me, touched me, and healed me. Therefore, I would like to focus on how the Lord helped our relationship grow.
12. First, the Lord changed me, the husband and the head of the family (of course, the Lord is still changing me and I believe that He will change me until I die) (Transformation). The Lord brought out my painful feelings that I had suppressed deep in my heart little by little. For example, the Lord made me share my wounded emotions honestly with my loving wife. That means that the Lord made my wife listen to me when I told her about my wounded feelings and also made my wife understand my feelings. I think that the Lord’s work gave me the courage to share my painful feelings with my wife little by little.
13. But more importantly, the Lord’s work of change is that the Lord has gradually freed me from one of my most painful emotions, ‘guilt feeling,’ by making me believe and rely more on the Light, Jesus Christ, and the power of His blood on the cross. Not only that, the Lord has gradually made my heart and emotions, which were easily hurt by my wife’s anger and words, strong, firm, and courageous through the powerful word of God (Reference: 1 Peter 5:10). Furthermore, the Holy Spirit who lives in me has made me bear more and more fruit of love, allowing me to gradually see into my wife’s heart better than her anger and words, and giving me the desire to love her more with the love of the Lord. In particular, the Holy Spirit gradually allowed me to see my wife’s painful emotions more clearly, and gave me a heart of compassion toward her. Ultimately, the Lord shaped and broadened our hearts through our conflicts, so that we could acknowledge and embrace each other’s differences, and even gradually embrace the wounds we inflicted on each other unintentionally (unwillingly). An important realization in the process was that through our conflicts, we were able to see each other’s painful feelings, and those painful feelings helped us understand more about the backgrounds in which each of us grew up.
14. For example, when my wife and I lived in Korea about 23 years ago, one day my wife and I had an argument because of our beloved son Dillon, who was attending a church kindergarten. The reason we had an argument was that I wanted Dillon to yield to other children in kindergarten, and my wife wanted Dillon to do what he wanted to do rather than yield. The realization that the Lord gave me at that time was that I had grown up seeing my parents yield and learned to do so, so I wanted my son to be a yielding person, and my wife, as the eldest daughter, had not been able to do what she wanted to do and had to yield to her parents and live in obedience to their words, so she did not want her beloved Dillon to become like her (I came to know a little bit about the deep and painful feelings my wife had, albeit late). Ultimately, our conflict at that time became an opportunity for my wife and I to get to know and understand each other better.
15. I want to finish this article. While I was writing this article for a long time, I checked my phone from time to time and saw that my niece Lois (my brother’s eldest daughter) posted a video on her Instagram story about starting an ultramarathon 100 miles (163 km) at around 5 a.m. today. My wife is now with Lois, her friend, and two of her marathon friends to run her second ultramarathon 100 miles in about two years. I have a purpose for fully supporting my beloved wife who loves running. That purpose is because I earnestly pray that the Lord will free my wife from all the painful feelings, stress, and things that she thinks are harmful to her through the marathon. That is why I have been holding on to this word in faith and praying for my beloved wife for about 28 years of marriage: “And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” I believe that the Lord will continue to establish my wife and I as a more Lord-centered couple!