Welcome to the Daily Still podcast, a place to pause.

Here we create space to listen for the whispers of God.

I'm your host Cindy Helton, and I believe one of the greatest gifts we can give to

ourselves is room to be still.

Today's soul care meditation focuses on our emotional awareness. Psychologists tell us you have to feel to heal.

Often we don't give ourselves permission to feel deeply or take the time to be curious about our feelings.

Every feeling you have matters.

Emotions were created by God, but often we struggle to feel difficult feelings.

During my training as a spiritual director, I was introduced to the feelings wheel as a tool

for prayer. The feelings wheel is a gauge to help navigate our inner emotional landscapes.

It helps put words to our emotions. If you aren't familiar with it,

you can Google it to get more information, but to quickly explain, there are six

primary emotions at the center of the wheel. Fear, anger, disgust, surprise, sad, and happy. Those branch out into a secondary set of emotions

and then a third set of more specific feelings. For example, if your primary emotion is happy,

it can represent a myriad of other more specific emotions, like optimistic, intimate,

peaceful, accepted, amused, playful, open, etc. For me, identifying how I'm feeling as I go

to prayer has helped me process my emotions honestly with God.

I think of my prayer time as an authentic conversation with a friend who would ask me,

How are you doing today?

So in this space, I invite you to sit with your feelings in the presence of a loving God, who sees you and asks,

How are you doing today, friend? So let's settle in and begin. There is a time for everything.

A time to cry, a time to laugh.

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