It’s not fair! You always pick on me, I said, close to tears and stormed out the door. I had just found out that my vocational training schedule had been changed and I was none to happy about it. I brooded about how unfair it was and felt sorry for myself for the next couple of days but after the whole experience was over I realized how immature and selfish I had been. It really hadn’t been that bad and the way I had acted really hadn’t helped the situation. In fact, it had just hurt me.

I’m sure many of you have had the same experience; something happens that we don’t agree with and instead of looking at it from a mature standpoint, we get upset.

In my four years at Laurelbrook Academy, I have learned that the emotionally mature part of our character is one of the hardest to curb. It is so easy to get upset when something goes wrong, to yell or snap at someone when they aren’t doing what they’re supposed to, but these types of emotions are a far cry from the types that God wants us to have as His children.

Everyone is emotional in some way. We all have things that make us happy, sad, upset, excited or hurt. Showing emotions is not bad but letting them control us can get us in a huge heap of trouble. “God’s children are not to be subject to feelings and emotions. When they fluctuate between hope and fear the heart of Christ is hurt; for He had given them unmistakable evidence of His love.” Ellen White, Messages to Young People, pg. 110.

God has given us so many gifts, and we cannot deny that He loves us. Because we may not agree with what He allowed to happen, because we thought the situation should have been handled differently we fail to see God’s loving hand in every experience we have. If we cling to the promise that He love’s us and He will help us through, we will be able to learn and grow from them. “As our opportunities multiply, our experience will enlarge, and our knowledge increase. We shall become strong to bear responsibility, and our maturity will be in proportion to our privileges.” Ellen White, Christ's Object Lessons, pgs. 65,66.

How can you know if you have emotional maturity? The first question to ask yourself is, “Am I in control or my emotions?” Can you give a reasonable explanation for your actions or were you controlled by your feelings?

Another question to ask is, “Do you make proper use of your emotions as the basis of action.” The emotional energy that we have should not be allowed to go to waste. When something happens that we don’t like instead of using our emotional energy to feel sorry for ourselves we should use it to try and remedy the situation that made us feel bad in the first place. There have been times when I have had a lot to accomplish like doing a project for school. I’m not sure how I’m going to get it all accomplished, so I go around complaining to everyone about how much I have to do and how I don’t think I’ll ever get it finished. Soon it’s time to go somewhere or do something else and the project isn’t even started because I wasted all the energy I had worrying about getting it done and never put any energy into starting it.

The last question you need to ask is, “Am I conscious of whether or not I am acting on the basis of feeling or thinking?” When you are in a bad mood do you stop and think, “hey, I’m letting my emotions get the best of me.” If you are upset do you wait a while before making decisions so you ca think rationally about them?

When I think of emotional maturity the first person that come to my mind is Joseph in Egypt. He had many opportunities to act on emotion and not principle. When he was falsely accused and thrown in jail, when he was released from jail and promoted to the second highest position in the land, when his brothers, who had sold him into slavery, came to him for food, he could have gotten mad gotten even. “How was Joseph enabled to make such a record of firmness of character, uprightness and wisdom?—In his early years he had consulted duty rather than inclination; and the integrity, simple trust, the noble nature, of the youth bore fruit in the deeds of the man. PP 222

These questions and this story have helped me so much in my four years here at Laurelbrook and I hope to remember and use them as a guide for my college years and throughout the rest of my life. As we go through out life and face different and difficult situations we must decide how these situations are going to affect us and how we are going to react to them. I challenge you, juniors, as you become seniors and are faced with new situations, to look at them from a rational standpoint, not just an emotional one and make decisions that others can look at and see how you have grown. And to everyone, I challenge you to look beyond how you feel and make decisions based on facts and principles because we know that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according his purpose.