Feeeelings… nothing more than feeeeelings. Or something else?

Do you ever find yourself in a mental-emotional place where your feelings contradict the thing you know to be true?  Or when you don’t feel good about the thing you know to be right, or feel bad about the thing you know to be good?

It’s annoying, but it happens on occasion, and it is important to at least be able to recognize what is going on so that the feelings don’t get the upper hand.

I’m going to tell about a weird conversation I had with the Lord to illustrate how I discovered Satan had been working on me to try to stop me from making progress.

Heavenly Father, I don’t understand what’s going on. I have to finish these minutes for the meeting, but I don’t want to do it. But I also want to do it, and here I am folding clothes when I should be working on finishing the minutes. I’ve already done the biggest part of the minutes job, and it shouldn’t be a problem to finish it, but it feels like it is a huge job hanging over my head and I don’t want to do it.  I know I’m mostly finished, but I don’t feel how close I am. I know it shouldn’t be a big deal, but it feels like a big burden. Why am I feeling like this?  I know I have troubles finishing tasks as a symptom of ADD, but this seems different.

I also know that as I make the action list from the minutes, I will be creating a task list for myself as well as the other people in the organization. And when I’m done, I’m going to feel like I have to do all those tasks immediately instead of getting on to the tasks that are most important to me that I want to do today. I know I’m going to feel like this because this has happened in the past. It is possible I’m folding clothes because I’m trying to show myself I can do some tasks anyway that are important to me before I finish the minutes. That seems to make it a control issue; I’m trying to show I have control over what I choose to do.

This seems like a situation in which my feelings are lying to me. I don’t like that. Please help me to do what I know I need to do.

Feelings? Really?  Is it “nothing more than feelings”? 

Sometimes it is Satan.

It is Satan who attempts to hijack feelings like that. Feelings are very powerful, and they are useful for motivation, but they are changeable and can be manipulated. This is why it is a great safeguard that we are promised in the D&C the Lord will tell us things in both our mind and our heart.

When I finished my prayer, it was clear to me that Satan had been trying to attack me through my feelings. And if he’s doing that to me, he probably does that to you too. My prayers to Heavenly Father talking about the situation helped me realize it and know what I needed to do. (I trust that when I get done, I will feel happy about it, and the obstructing feelings will dissipate.)

Don’t let Satan win.