This is my first children’s book and I’m excited to share it with you. Tell God How You Feel is a discipleship tool for parents to use to help their children learn to bring their emotions to the Lord in prayer. It helps children learn to identify and verbalize their emotions. It helps them learn that God cares about their emotions. It helps them learn to see God as their place of refuge in all the cares of life.
The book contains separate stories, each focusing on a specific emotion all children feel: fear, sadness, rejection, loneliness, and gratitude. The characters in each story learn about what God’s word says about these feelings. They learn about people in the Bible who felt those emotions. They learn how to tell God about their emotions and ask for his help. Each story contains discussion questions which help parents talk with their children about their feelings and about the God who loves and cares for them. If you are familiar with my book, A Heart Set Free: A Journey to Hope Through the Psalms of Lament, then you’ll recognize that this book is inspired by it. It plants a seed in the hearts of children, giving them a beginning understanding of what it looks like to lament to God all of their feelings.
We all have habits in how we respond to difficult emotions, many of which we developed as children. Some of us distract ourselves from what we are feeling. Others pretend we are feeling fine when in fact we are not. As a Weight Watcher’s commercial from a few years ago revealed, some eat in response to any emotion they feel—whether good or bad. Rather than develop unhealthy responses to emotions, my hope is that as children grow and mature, they will develop the spiritual habit of turning to the Psalms and using its prose to help them shape their own prayers and laments to the Lord.
Want to learn more about the book? You can view a sample here. It’s available for pre-order now and will officially release on Friday. Are you on social media? Be sure to visit my Facebook page and @christinarfox on Instagram this week to enter for opportunities to win a copy.
