Emotional monuments are one of those things that happen in some traditional ways in our cultures, but are not used nearly as often as they should be.

An emotional monument is something like a birthday, or graduation, or your first promotion, or when you got saved, or married, or something like that.  They are milestones, a place where you invested significant emotion and therefore it becomes a marker in your emotional timeline.  There can be emotional monuments that exist in a generational sense as well.  These are often the stories that get passed down from one generation to the next, “remember when Grandpa Jones opened his first hamburger joint”, or “when Aunt Mildred married the shoe salesman and they had a million children”.  Emotional monuments are throughout Scripture as well.  It was so important to Father God that the Israelites remember their history that He created feasts with specific elements to help them recreate the story.

Emotional monuments help to anchor you to your emotional timeline.  They create specific points where you have invested emotional energy in the events in your life and made an emotional file that can be accessed again.  Part of our groundedness comes from the stability of experience.  When you get rattled, you can look back on the emotional monuments you have created and say, “I have been through tough times before, look where God has taken me, here is where I have grown, the experiences I have had, I can make it through this too.”  When we can access emotional history and see God’s fingerprints, it goes a long way to giving us stability in the present.  But we have to own it first.  And sadly, there are a lot of people who can’t do that very well because they have so completely disconnected from the continuum.

In the same way, you can draw from the emotional monuments of your generational or even national heritage.  The stories of your past generations can be an inspiration to you.  Perhaps they bring you a sense of dignity.  Perhaps there is wisdom you can gain when you engage with the stories of your past.  What about your nation?  I have done quite a bit of reading on America in the last couple of years, particularly our birth as a nation.  There were a lot of things that weren’t great, but there were a lot of really good things too.  I can celebrate those monuments, and emotionally engage with them.  It is in my blood.  I am an American.  It makes my present existence more robust and colorful, and anchors me in another place in my emotional timeline.  In fact, it connects me at a place before my personal timeline began, which adds some extra punch!

So, I would suggest that you approach this from two different angles.  The first is historical.  Look for some family or national emotional monuments that you can engage with and own as part of you.  Celebrate the value and look for God’s fingerprints.  Sometimes it helps to engage in the process out loud: “Grandpa Jones’ first hamburger joint is a part of MY history.  His tenacity was incredible.  He fought against all odds.  That kind of fighting spirit is part of my heritage.  It is a fingerprint of God.”  You emotionally own it, not just acknowledge it in your head.  Just like you invest your emotions in a big event in your own life.

For some people, making emotional monuments will take a lot of practice, so don’t be afraid to start small.  You don’t have to create these big celebrations or go on a fancy trip or something to make a monument.  It can even be celebrating the end of a day.  Just take a few moments to invest some emotional energy in going over the day, find God’s fingerprints, and own it.  Even those little daily monuments are excellent because it is so easy for us to disconnect from our day-to-day lives, especially when they are traumatic.  If you have to work hard to find the good, then ask for Father to show you His fingerprints.  He is more than able!

I would also encourage you to be thinking of monuments you can build in the future.  Maybe you can take some time away once a year to spend with the Lord.  That could be an emotional monument, and because it is a regular occurence, it will actually help to sanctify time.  Or perhaps time away with a spouse, or a project you can celebrate when you finish.

This tool is only one in the whole package, but should be a foundational practice.  It will help root you across a wider spectrum so that you are not so emotionally vulerable when the wind starts blowing.  When you see how God’s fingerprints are all over your history, and emotionally engage with the process, it does a lot to ground you.  Not only will you be more stable, but you will have a bigger perspective and more resources to offer the King.