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Key Bible Verse: You turned my wailing into dancing. … that my heart may sing to you and not be silent (Psalm 30:11-12).
Bonus Reading: Psalm 30

We don't quite know what to make of the strange sensations that come from deep within. Somewhere along the line, most of us have been told that these feelings, these sensations of the heart, are not to be trusted, not to be acknowledged, not to be seen as part of a masculine character.

Listen to what one man writes:

"Two days before my fiftieth birthday I had a heart attack. It was a most surprising random act of kindness. I had lived the previous 30 years of my life as a powerful, successful, and amazingly productive man. I had also lived so cut off from my emotions that I couldn't even fathom what the whole fuss about feelings was all about. I had worn out the efforts of three good women, took pride in my unfeeling logic, denied that there was anything wrong or missing in my life, and was prepared to march stubbornly forward.

"Until I was felled and terrified by my own heart. That experience unlocked a lifetime of buried emotions. So, without knowing it, when the doctors revived me, they delivered me to a life full and more beautiful than I had ever imagined."

—Gordon MacDonald in When Men Think Private Thoughts

Here's how the way I deal with my emotions compares to how my Dad did:

Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart push in their tides.

—Dylan Thomas (Welsh poet, 20th century)

Adapted from: When Men Think Private Thoughts (Nelson, 1996) with permission.

For your convenience, When Men Think Private Thoughts is available in the ChristianityToday.com bookstore.

Copyright © 2001 by the author or Christianity Today, Inc./Men of Integrity magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

Lord, let me grow to be—like David and Jonathan—a whole man: physically and mentally strong, emotionally expressive.

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