Emotional Intelligence

This picture was taken at 7.35 pm, that man is Daniel, my husband minutes after he got a call saying his father had been killed in Honduras. He cleaned the tears and went back to the sanctuary to finish the children's night ministry. Hours after this we cried, prayed and flew to Honduras for the funeral.

I hope this one is meant for you. Today, I felt the need to share about one of the most common challenges of the millennium: emotional intelligence. You all know I am no expert, just super fan of research and observation. So here goes my down to earth definition of emotional intelligence: it is the capacity of touching rock bottom and knowing how to get up on your feet again.

Here is the thing, real life is hard. It is full of challenges and suffering. But the younger a human being is, the less developed this ability is. Of course, that is not the case for the 100% of the population around the globe. For instance, all those so called 3rd world countries have a very high level of emotional intelligence. Why? Because suffering is the perfect scenario to develop survival, emotional strength. That is one of my thanksgivings to God for having me be born in poverty. Don’t get me wrong, I love been able to move around in a car, or not being at risk of an assault on a daily basis, but there are things that are the norm for me like: working hard to advance, enjoying a fancy cup of coffee or a once a month store shopping. Just because those, to mention a few, are not things that happen that often in poverty.

The majority of children at HSD Honduras, suffer some kind of deed need. In this place you hardly hear complaining or a child crying from an accident in the playing areas.

Pain teaches us, marks our essence like no academics could. It makes us aware of the pain in somebody else’s life. But it can also make us think suffering should be the norm for everyone. I have seen this last one also in a form of envy, conformism and laziness.

A person with Emotional Intelligence gets back on its feet stronger after suffering. While a person with low E I, makes drama and takes longer to or sometimes never overcomes a challenge.

So what do we do? And where do you find yourself? My words on this matter if I may, would be:

1. Appreciate suffering. Complaining, making accusations and defending is easy. But at the end it will not help you to be stronger.

2. Try developing attitudes to face pain. When a child falls, what do we do? Do we run because – suffering should not happen? Well we are not helping the little one develops tools for life. We can apply a 5 second waiting rule, because naturally most kids even more so babies, will manage to find a way to figure it out and they will forget they just fell, they just said good bye to mommy, they were just told “no” about something.

Russian soldier in Chechnya 1994. In the midst of pain, find purpose, use it to make you stronger,

3. For all of us believers in God, our first responsibility is with Him and to encourage everyone around us to seek Him. When God is first, we obey and honor Him first and we do not enthrone our children, nor ourselves.

4. Know and live a life with the certainty that you will suffer pain, it is humans who administrate this world, and boy are we experts in making things go wrong. So, the more we are aware of stumbling, death, betrayals, hardship, natural disasters and illness, the more prepared we will be to live life abundantly accepting life on earth as exactly that, life.

Are you still with me? I would love to hear about you and your challenges. So, leave a comment or write to our email. Nobody has it all figured it out, we are all in through this life. Write to you soon.