The Emotional Devotional

By Naomi Rossow

As a teenage girl, you experience a multitude of emotions every day in different combinations and presentations. Emotions are so unpredictable, especially for teenagers. As you grow in your body and mind, you also want to also be able to grow in your faith.

The changes that happen in your life over the course of these years can be scary and confusing, especially if you don’t have someone to walk through it with you. As the oldest child, oldest cousin, in a new school and state, I often felt alone in the changes I was experiencing. A few years later, I now talk to my little sister and get to help her walk through the mood swings and outbursts of being a teenage girl. Sometimes it helps to know you are not alone.

The teenage girls who wrote this devotion book know firsthand what it’s like to wade through the waves of emotion. In fact, we are wading through them right now, too. These devotions are not meant to be therapy or counseling. We haven’t gone through medical school. None of us holds a degree in psychology. The book is not a “fix” for your emotions. We just want to help you invite Jesus into your emotions. We want to share our stories with openness, honesty, and vulnerability, in hopes that we can help you grow in your faith and build a stronger relationship with Jesus.

The list of emotions in this book is far from complete; but it is a start. So, when you are ready, read on and see how we have experienced inviting Jesus into our emotions.

You are not alone in your journey.

Let’s do this!

By Justin Rossow

If you are not a teenage girl, this book was not written for you. You can still read it, of course, and you would discover a lot about yourself, about teenage girls, and even about following Jesus in your emotions. But it’s not really for you.

That’s not to say your emotions aren’t important, or teenage girls are somehow more emotional than other people. God created all of us human beings as people with bodies and souls, minds and emotions. All of us can learn more and more to follow Jesus in every emotion.

The teenagers who wrote this book share their experience from their own particular perspective with an honesty that invites especially other teenage girls into the wonderful and confusing process of inviting Jesus into their emotions. They write with authenticity and empathy, as a friend for someone who could really use a friend right now.

This Emotional Devotional isn’t trying to “fix” or “cure” anything about the teenage girl in your life. The one thing this book will do is help her practice bringing her emotions to Jesus and talking to Him about them.

That might sound simple, but growing into a personal and confidential relationship with Jesus is part of what it means to become a person of faith. That dependence on Jesus in the midst of every experience—even those that make faith seem foolish or juvenile—is something we all will continue to grow into, until our faith is made sight. But we don’t have to walk that journey alone.

The list of emotions covered here is not complete. How could it be? But these emotions are diverse and common enough to cultivate the habit of looking for Jesus in every emotion.

I love the girls who wrote this book. They risk sharing their inner thoughts and prayers and struggles and failures so that others might also think and pray and struggle and fail with Jesus instead of on their own.

If you give this book as a gift to the important teenage girl in your life, don’t expect a sudden miracle; but do expect for her—little by little, one step at a time—to begin to feel more confident bringing her experiences to Jesus, even when she doesn’t know what to pray.

And expect Jesus to be there for her, before she prays, while she prays, and when she forgets to pray. That, by far, is miracle enough.

By Gabriella Wiechman

To give you an idea of how to use the emotion wheel, I am going to walk you through my process.

When I am noticing myself getting overwhelmed with emotions or confused as to what I am feeling, the first thing I always try to do (but sometimes forget) is to sit in God’s presence. For me this looks like turning on worship music with the volume all the way up, putting away my phone and any other devices, and turning off the lights.

Sometimes I just sit or lay down, and other times I’m jumping around worshipping; there is no right or wrong way to sit with Jesus. I like to listen to music because it helps me drown out other distractions and focus on Jesus and what He is telling me.

Once I have soaked in Christ’s presence for a little while, I then try to notice what my body has been doing during the day. Am I relaxed, or have my muscles been tense? Have I been short tempered, or have small things not bothered me? Things like that help me notice which of the broader six emotions I am feeling. Most people already have experience naming these broad emotions, so you might find it easy to pick one, two, or even three you are feeling right now.

From there it becomes a bit more personal and complicated because there are so many emotions we could be feeling, and not just one at a time. So this is the part where it is so important to have Jesus in the conversation (just like every other part), because through Christ I find myself being made more aware of what it is I’m feeling.

For me, I usually hear God’s voice in my mind very clearly, and maybe you do, too! That often is what helps me understand the deeper and more complex emotions I’m feeling, but sometimes God’s voice seems distant and hard to hear, and that’s okay!

When I am having trouble hearing God’s voice in the midst of my emotions, or my mind is so loud I can’t seem to focus, it is helpful to me to just look at an emotion wheel or a list of emotions. I go through the list and read an emotion word and think about what it means and if that sounds like what I’m feeling, just like you might do if you are hungry and want a snack—you might go and look at your options. It’s just the same with emotions. There might not be a list of all the emotions you could ever feel, but that’s what the emotions wheel is for: take a look at your options, and see if any of them seem like what you are feeling.

Then, once I figure out the emotion (or usually, emotions) I am feeling, I take it to God. I ask God to comfort me if I’m afraid, or celebrate with me if I’m excited. No matter what emotion you are feeling, your Heavenly Father will always want to know about it and talk to you about it.

I invite you to take a look at the emotions wheel and become familiar with at least the six general emotions so that the next time you are confused or overwhelmed with your feelings, you are able to use this tool to help you distinguish what you are feeling. Then invite Jesus into the very specific experience of your very specific emotions. He’ll be glad to meet you there!