faith unfaded

Have you ever had a day when your emotions felt closer to the surface than usual?

Maybe you cried more easily.
Maybe small things felt bigger than they normally would.
Maybe you felt tender, raw, or unusually sensitive—and you couldn’t quite explain why.

For a lot of us, the first instinct is to spiritualize it or shame it: Why can’t I get it together? But before you assume something is wrong emotionally or spiritually, it helps to understand what’s happening physiologically.

Here’s the science—plain and simple.

Your body has a limited amount of energy. When it’s dealing with pain, illness, inflammation, fatigue, stress, or even prolonged overwhelm, it has to prioritize. Systems that keep you alive and healing take precedence. Systems that help with emotional filtering and regulation—particularly parts of the brain responsible for impulse control and emotional buffering—often get less bandwidth.

In other words, when your body is busy fighting something, your emotions lose their usual filter and become magnified.

That’s why people often feel more emotional when they’re sick, exhausted, overstimulated, or worn down. It’s not weakness. It’s not regression. It’s biology. Your feelings are coming through unmuted.

Once you know that, the question shifts from What’s wrong with me? to How do I get through this?

I am no stranger to that question.

Not all the time—but certainly when I’m tired, overwhelmed, or my body is clearly fighting something. That’s when I find myself tearing up at commercials, feeling unusually emotional, and having moments of compassion so intense they concern me.

Like yesterday, as I traveled a long stretch of I-55 South behind a trailer of pigs living their best life. Only I knew their destination was likely a slaughterhouse. I’m not even a vegetarian, but in that moment—after 27 days on the road and growing fatigue—I started to tear up.

In my head I created a diversion, ran to the back of the truck and unleashed the trailer gate, giving those pigs a last chance at freedom while I never ate pork again.

In reality, I passed the truck (I may have mean-mugged the driver a little) and ordered ham for breakfast this morning.

I’ve learned not to see those moments of weakness as failures. I actually love that I feel deeply—it’s part of how I love, pray, and connect. Feeling isn’t the problem.

The problem comes when the feelings feel unregulated—when they have more control over you than you have over them.

And that’s where the hack comes in.

When your body’s natural emotional “buffer” is down, you don’t have to white-knuckle self-control or shame yourself into composure. Scripture offers something better: borrowed regulation.

The Holy Spirit doesn’t eliminate emotion—He orders it.

The Bible calls Him the Comforter, not the Controller. He doesn’t numb feelings or silence tears. He brings peace within them. That’s why self-control is listed as fruit of the Spirit—not as a personality trait, but as a Spirit-supplied capacity.

Even Jesus cried. “Jesus wept.” (John 11:35, KJV)
Tears weren’t a lack of faith then, and they aren’t now.

But when emotions feel like they’re spilling over faster than you can manage—especially when you’re sick, tired, or overwhelmed—that’s often an invitation, not a failure. An invitation to let the Holy Spirit step in where your natural defenses are temporarily thin.

I’ve learned to pray something simple in those moments:
“Lord, I don’t need fewer feelings. I need Your steadiness.”

And that prayer doesn’t make me cold or detached. It makes me grounded. I still feel deeply—I just don’t feel hijacked.

So if you find yourself unusually emotional in a season of stress or exhaustion, take heart. Your body may be fighting something. Your emotions may be unfiltered. And God may be offering you a deeper kind of support—one that doesn’t shame your humanity, but strengthens it.

Nothing here is broken.
Sometimes you’re just tired—and wonderfully human.
And the Holy Spirit is more than enough for that.