BUBBLE GUM OF EMOTIONS

What is your emotion out of the rainbow? A bubble gum machine is filled with different colors and flavors of gumdrops. There are some machines with limited colors or just one color, but many of them contain a rainbow. To retrieve the gummy treat, you insert a coin, turn the knob and out pops a colorful, chewy delight.  

To oversimply the concept of a bubble gum machine, there is a:

• Glass globe. This is the container filled with the multicolor gum.
• Keyhole, lock and key. This is on top of the glass globe, to remove the globe, in order to fill or remove the gum and to retrieve the money.
• Metal base. The foundation where the glass globe is perched.
• Coin Mechanism. This is the device where the coin is inserted.
• Coin. This item is inserted into the mechanism.
• The handle. The device that is turned.
• The shoot door is the area where the gum drop is dispersed.
• Gumdrop.

If you can imagine, our emotions can represent a range of colors. Red for anger. Green with envy. Black for sophistication. Blue is calming. Yellow can represent an illness. The colors vary according to different cultures. For the most part, you can understand the gist for emotions and colors. And, you can understand the color that most represents the emotion you are feeling.

Emotions are how we feel. Anger, sadness, hurt and all emotions are felt by everyone. It is an art in knowing you cannot stay in that emotion and to find ways to control them. Events, issues and afflictions will happen to everyone. It is what you say and how you react is the key. Don’t allow emotions to control you.

Take the gum drop process and compare it with you and your feelings.  

• This glass globe is your heart, filled with different emotions.
• Key and lock. The key it to unlock your mind to negativity. And, lock your mind on positive influences.
• Metal base is your foundation. How strong is your foundation? It is built, with God. Built on yourself and pride. Or, on whatever the world dictates.
• The mechanism is the way you think or your reaction.
• Coin. This is an issue or affliction that is inserted into your life.
• Handle. Is how you handle the situation, when the affliction turns up in your life?
• Shoot door is your mouth and the words you disperse.
• The color of the gumdrop is your emotion that emerges.   

Your heart may be filled with negativity, maybe that is how you were raised or from the surroundings you had to endure. Your foundation may be weak. When no foundation is laid in God, then the world’s influences will take over. Any time, any affliction is inserted into your mechanism, once your handle is turned, a negative reaction is dispersed.

Listed below are only a few emotionally charged individuals:

• The fighter. These are the people when an issue occurs, they instantly become angry, spitting out profanity, and ready to fight.
• Unloved. They begin to cry, thinking the entire world is against them, walking away, feeling unloved.
• Attention seeker. They need to tell everyone about their problem, expecting sympathy and attention.
• Low self-esteem. Everything is their fault regardless if they were a part of it or not. Always blaming themselves.

Stop allowing your handles to be turned and out pops a heated emotion. Get in control of your feelings. Stop allowing your emotion to take you to places you don’t want to be. Out of uncontrolled emotion are the beginnings of illnesses, high blood pressure and ulcers. Uncontrolled emotions lands people without jobs, without relationships and possibly in jail.

How do you get in control?

• Pray to God to assist you to have authority over your emotions. No one can change without God and His assistance.
• Have a willing mind that you want to rule your feelings. Many people just want to be mad and stay mad.
• Stop, look and listen. Maybe the first heated emotion came out, without a thought. Ok. Stop yourself before carrying on (you can only do this if you have prayed on the matter and asked God for discipline. Look up to the heavens and ask for help. Look around at the people near you. Look at how you are behaving. Listen for God’s direction. The direction can be to take a walk, listen to music, read a scripture, sing a song. Do something that will deter you from that ball of feelings.
• Repeat the process above until you have control. This make take many repeats.

 A fool vents all his feelings. But a wise man holds them back.  Proverbs 29:11 New King James Version (NKJV)