Sometimes in the church, we downplay feelings or teach not to trust feelings. "Feelings are temporary." "Stop crying." "Get over it." As a result, many Christians feel uncomfortable being honest about their fears, their hurts, their anger, their sadness, and so on, because those things are just temporary and we seem to believe that because they're temporary, they have no value, they can't be trusted, or we have nothing to learn from them.
We want to affirm that we're allowed to feel things, God created us to feel things, Jesus felt things, and, understood well, our feelings can point us back to our need for God and community.
