Needs

By Megan Danquah

Did you know that you were created with needs? Needs of many kinds. Our bodies have need for food, water, exercise and sleep. Those are some of our physical needs. What about emotional needs? Have you ever stopped to consider what emotional needs you have? As women, I can guarantee you that you are in touch with the emotional needs of your husband, children, friends. What about yourself? What are YOUR emotional needs?

Growing up a Christian, it was always a given that I had physical needs. After all, I knew that if I didn’t eat, drink, move and sleep that eventually I would die. Therefore, I knew how to take care of my needs in that area and placed meeting those needs as a priority every single day. My physical needs were satiated. On the other hand, I was literally starved emotionally for lack of recognizing and getting my emotional needs met. The emphasis of the message I was hearing was not centered on the importance of taking time to myself to recharge, finding time to pursue things that brought me life, or even the deeper needs of hearing that I was enough. As humans, we need to know that we are loved, that we belong, that we have immeasurable value and worth. We need to know that what we think, our opinions, our likes and dislikes, our personality are all important. We need to know that we are enough. Period. 

I’ve noticed that in church, we hear a lot about how God meets our emotional needs and that is absolutely true. Because we live in a world full of sin, God is the only perfect being who can meet our emotional needs and we can rest in that fully. There is another side to all this, however. The main, God-given role of our parents in our childhood was to actually show us what God is like! Their job was to “be” God to us because, as children, that is literally how we perceive our parents. They were to show us what a loving God was like: how He meets our needs physically but also emotionally.  

But let’s face it: how many of us transitioned into adulthood with a perfect view of who God is based solely on how our parents raised us? I have yet to meet one person who fits that criteria. Our parents did the best they could and yet, because of the sin problem again, they weren’t able to give us the fullest that God had in mind. So we are left emotionally deficient and without a true understanding of the goodness of God.  

The reason I use parents as an example of meeting emotional needs is because I want to challenge us. It was (and still is!) God’s intention that other people were placed on earth to help meet the deep emotional needs that we have, not just God. (After all, God recognized that there was no suitable “helper” for Adam on earth, none that could fulfill him and meet his needs like another human and so he gave Eve to Adam for that purpose.) People aren’t perfect, for sure, and many of us have been deeply wounded by people who were close to us. As a result, it can be really hard for us to trust anyone around us with our emotional needs because the sting of the pain is very real.  

I want to say that there is hope for you! Hope for you to be able to heal from those emotional wounds from your childhood and/or adulthood and begin to see some of the unique people that God has placed in your life right now who could be there to meet some emotional needs for you. God doesn’t want any of us to be starved emotionally. As I have spent several years in a counselors office, doing the hard work of healing wounds, I am starting to recognize the importance of the people around me. Not everyone, but a few handpicked people that are safe for me to be vulnerable with and communicate the needs that I have so that I can get them met. I have three in my life right now who I know that I can be completely honest with and they will champion me and will do what they can to meet the needs I present because we have talked about that as a part of our relationship.  

It is not only permissible but necessary, woman of God, to recognize and seek out getting your emotional needs met, in order for you to live at the highest capacity that God saw from the beginning of time for your life! Wherever you are at right now, I encourage you to start with one small step today to see those needs getting met. That could mean picking up the phone or meeting for coffee with a friend that you already know is safe and taking a step of vulnerability with them. It could mean having a few awkward and uncomfortable talks with your spouse to let them see what’s inside of you, or it could mean that you may see that one of your needs is some counseling and therapy to help you move forward (it is the best and most loving thing I have done for myself in the past two years!). But please, PLEASE don’t go another day ignoring the beautiful and valuable needs that lie inside of you because a bright, new day lies just around the corner for you, holding the possibility of living fulfilled in such a way that you never could have imagined!