My Dear Sibling in Christ,
Tonight’s reflection was originally intended to remain behind the paywall as part of the Life in the Resurrection series.
But the more I worked on this essay, the more convinced I became that too many people are quietly carrying shame about their emotions, their reactions, and the moments when overwhelm overtakes them.
And honestly, I keep feeling resistant to the idea that meaningful spiritual writing only becomes sustainable by hiding more and more of it behind locked doors.
Substack may prefer that model. I’m not entirely convinced.
Because I believe many of you are here for something deeper.
Together, we are trying to build a thoughtful, compassionate, spiritually serious community where faith actually speaks to real human life, not just abstract religious ideas and charming stories. A place where people can wrestle honestly with grief, anger, fear, emotional exhaustion, relationships, discipleship, healing, justice, and what it means to become more fully alive in Christ.
I believe with my whole being that this kind of work is more important than ever.
And I further believe many of you support Message From the Margins not because every post is hidden behind a paywall, but because you genuinely want this kind of writing, conversation, prayer, and community to exist in the world.
Earlier today I lowered subscription pricing because I want this space to remain accessible to ordinary people trying to navigate ordinary life faithfully. Sustaining thoughtful independent ministry and writing takes real time, care, and labor, but I never want cost to become another unnecessary barrier between people and the kind of faith and community we are building together here.
So tonight’s essay is free for everyone.
If this work has been meaningful to you, becoming a paid subscriber genuinely helps sustain and grow Message From the Margins.
But whether you are free or supporting, thank you for being part of this community.
Now… let’s talk about emotional overwhelm, the “Sons of Thunder,” and the strange grace of learning peace slowly over time.
At your service and His,
Life In The Resurrection Issue 12:
Even the “Sons of Thunder” Learned Peace
Emotional overwhelm is not always weakness, sometimes it is accumulated burden finally asking to be seen.
The argument itself wasn’t even that important.
A comment landed wrong. Someone interrupted you one too many times. Maybe you were already exhausted, already carrying stress you had not fully admitted to yourself, already stretched thin before the conversation even began. And then suddenly the emotion arrived faster than your ability to contain it.
Your voice changed.
You could feel it happening in real time and still could not seem to stop it.
Anger rose sharply. Or tears did. Or panic. Maybe you shut down completely and went emotionally cold. Maybe afterward you sat in your car replaying the entire interaction, embarrassed by how intensely you reacted to something that, on paper, probably did not seem large enough to justify the response.
And that part can feel deeply unsettling.
Not simply the emotion itself, but the loss of steadiness.
“I don’t feel like myself.”
“Why did I react like that?”
“I should be handling this better.”
I suspect many emotionally overwhelmed people spend a great deal of time quietly afraid of their own reactions.
Especially people who otherwise appear highly functional.
The parent holding everything together.
The employee everyone depends on.
The person who answers texts, pays bills, volunteers at church, remembers birthdays, shows up for other people, and keeps moving long after their inner world has become exhausted.
When those people finally become emotionally flooded, the shame afterward can be intense because they are used to being the stable one.
But emotional overwhelm rarely appears out of nowhere.
Usually there is history underneath it.
Accumulated stress.
Suppressed grief.
Old wounds.
Fear.
Chronic overstimulation.
Loneliness.
A nervous system that has been running on alert for far too long.
Sometimes emotions become overwhelming precisely because they have been ignored for too long beforehand.
Buried emotions rarely stay buried forever.
And modern life is not making this easier.
Human beings were not designed to absorb a nonstop stream of anxiety twenty-four hours a day. News alerts, financial stress, political hostility, online outrage, social comparison, family strain, exhaustion, constant stimulation, the pressure to remain productive even while emotionally depleted, all of this weighs on people more than many realize.
The body carries what the mind tries to outrun.
That is deeply important to understand because many people interpret overwhelm as weakness when often it is accumulated burden finally exceeding the system’s ability to contain it quietly.
The body does not experience life only intellectually.
When the brain perceives threat, rejection, humiliation, instability, fear, or emotional danger, the nervous system reacts quickly. Thoughts race. Breathing changes. Muscles tighten. Rational clarity narrows. Sometimes people become reactive before they fully understand what they are reacting to.
This is not necessarily moral failure.
Often it is protection.
Not always healthy protection.
Not always proportionate protection.
But protection nonetheless.
And perhaps this is not you.
Perhaps you are naturally calmer than the people being described here.
But I suspect most people know someone who lives this way.
The person whose reactions seem bigger than the moment.
The one who becomes defensive quickly.
The one who spirals emotionally under stress.
The one who lashes out, panics, shuts down, or becomes overwhelmed in ways that leave everyone else confused afterward.
Sometimes those people have even hurt us.
You may be reading this while carrying real anger, exhaustion, disappointment, or resentment toward someone whose emotional volatility affected your life deeply.
And to be clear, understanding emotional overwhelm does not mean tolerating abuse or abandoning healthy boundaries. Some relationships genuinely require distance, accountability, wisdom, or protection.
But understanding does change the way we see people.
I get asked surprisingly often:
“Father, how do I love my enemies?”
I think this is part of where that work begins.
Not with pretending destructive behavior is acceptable.
Not with becoming passive.
Not with denying pain.
But with recognizing that beneath many difficult reactions there is often fear, shame, woundedness, insecurity, grief, or a human being who has spent years surviving emotionally rather than living peacefully.
That does not erase responsibility.
But it can soften hatred.
It can interrupt the temptation to reduce another person to the hardest moment we experienced with them.
And for Christians, that matters deeply.
Because Christ consistently looked at human beings with a depth of understanding that went beyond behavior in the moment. He saw frightened people beneath arrogance. Wounded people beneath cruelty. Lost people beneath hostility.
Not every relationship can be repaired.
Not every person will change.
But understanding is often the first step toward becoming less ruled by resentment ourselves.
What many people forget is that Scripture itself is filled with emotionally intense human beings.
Pardon the interruption….
One of the things I care deeply about with Message From the Margins is creating space for honest, thoughtful Christian writing that actually speaks to real human life.
Not performative outrage.
Not shallow certainty.
Not spirituality disconnected from psychology, relationships, grief, fear, or the realities people actually carry.
If work like this has been meaningful to you, becoming a paid subscriber genuinely helps sustain and grow this publication.
Not simply as “content,” but as a community trying to practice a more compassionate, emotionally honest, spiritually serious faith together.
And tonight’s reflection continues with one of my favorite parts of the Gospel story, because it turns out even the “Sons of Thunder” had to learn peace slowly over time.
The disciples were not naturally serene men floating above ordinary human struggle. Some of them were famously reactive.
James and John were literally nicknamed the “Sons of Thunder.”
And at one point, after a Samaritan village rejected Jesus, they asked:
“Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?”
— Luke 9:54 (NIV)
It is such a painfully human moment.
They are angry.
Protective.
Emotionally certain.
Convinced their outrage is justified.
And Jesus rebukes them.
Not because emotion itself is sinful, but because discipleship slowly teaches us that not every intense feeling should immediately become action.
I actually find that deeply hopeful.
Because if we accept that the Letter of James was written by James the Apostle, the son of Zebedee, then the same “Son of Thunder” who once wanted to call fire from heaven later writes:
“Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.”
— James 1:19 (NIV)
That changes the verse completely for me.
Now it no longer sounds like a naturally calm man lecturing emotional people about self-control.
It sounds like someone who spent years being transformed by Christ.
The Gospel is not only for naturally serene people.
It is also for passionate people.
Reactive people.
Impulsive people.
People whose emotions sometimes arrive too loudly or too quickly.
Christian maturity is not emotional numbness.
It is learning, over time, how to remain rooted enough in God that emotion no longer completely seizes the steering wheel.
I say this as someone who does not naturally float through life in perfect emotional serenity myself.
I’m a New York Italian.
We can become emotionally invested very quickly.
Over the years, one of the spiritual practices that has genuinely helped me slow down before reacting is intentionally trying, however imperfectly, to see Christ in the person standing in front of me.
Not abstractly.
Actually.
The rude person.
The exhausting person.
The difficult parishioner.
The stranger irritating me in traffic.
The person I immediately feel defensive around.
Because the moment I remember:
“This is also someone loved by God,”
it becomes harder to reduce them entirely to the emotion I am feeling in that moment.
Not impossible.
I still fail at this sometimes.
But it creates space.
And sometimes a small space is enough to keep fear, anger, embarrassment, or emotional flooding from taking complete control of the situation.
I think this is part of why Scripture so often points us back toward God in moments of emotional intensity rather than simply commanding us to “calm down.”
Because human beings are not machines.
We need anchoring.
The Psalmist writes:
“From the ends of the earth I call to you,
I call as my heart grows faint;
lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”
— Psalm 61:2 (NIV)
Notice the honesty there.
He does not say:
“I have mastered myself.”
He says:
“My heart is overwhelmed.”
And then he turns upward.
Not because he is weak for needing help.
Because human beings were never meant to carry life entirely alone.
And God’s response throughout Scripture is not:
“Fix yourself first.”
It is:
“I am with you.”
“Do not fear, for I am with you…
I will strengthen you and help you…”
— Isaiah 41:10 (NIV)
That promise matters because many people secretly believe they are spiritually failing whenever emotions become intense.
But God does not abandon human beings inside overwhelm.
Very often, He meets us there.
Not every emotional reaction will disappear overnight.
Not every wound heals quickly.
Not every difficult relationship becomes easy.
But people can slowly become steadier.
Not through shame.
Not through emotional suppression.
Not through pretending not to feel.
But through prayer, awareness, honesty, grace, accountability, healthier patterns, and slowly learning to remain connected to God inside emotion instead of being completely ruled by it.
This week, when you feel yourself becoming emotionally overwhelmed, try resisting the urge to immediately judge yourself.
Pause first.
Notice what is happening in your body.
Notice the fear underneath the anger.
The exhaustion underneath the tears.
The hurt underneath the defensiveness.
And before reacting, even briefly, turn your attention upward.
Not because prayer magically erases emotion.
But because remembering God’s presence can sometimes create just enough steadiness for wisdom to re-enter the room.
That may be one of the quieter forms Resurrection takes inside ordinary life.
Not becoming less human.
Becoming more deeply rooted within your humanity.
May Christ, who transforms even Sons of Thunder into saints, continue forming your heart with patience, wisdom, mercy, and peace.
May the Holy Spirit help you remain anchored when emotions rise quickly, and compassionate toward both yourself and others in moments of struggle.
And may you discover that overwhelming feelings do not place you outside the presence, patience, or transforming love of God.
Amen.
Thank you so much for reading this reflection all the way through.
If it resonated with you, encouraged you, challenged you, or helped you feel a little less alone in your own humanity, I hope you’ll consider becoming a paid supporter of Message From the Margins.
I actually lowered subscription pricing today because I want supporting this work to feel more accessible to ordinary people navigating ordinary life.
This publication exists because people choose to help sustain thoughtful, compassionate, spiritually serious writing and community like this.
And whether you are a free subscriber or a paid one, I’m deeply grateful you’re here.