How to get un-stressed
Month 3 into 2019, still feeling like we welcomed the new year like, last week. This always happens, doesn’t it?
Sitting on my bed this afternoon, the sun is finally out, and the light hits the carpet in our bedroom with thin shadows from the window blinds. Around 3 o’clock is when our room shines the brightest.
I laugh, I almost added to that sentence: “…for when I’m home to enjoy it”, because I want you to know that I work hard and don’t often see my bedroom in the early afternoon because I’m busy. Bless it.
I don’t feel like putting together a beautiful string of words right now, I just want to be honest with what my mental & spiritual state is in, so that maybe one or two of you can say “hey, me too”. I mean it when I say that it really has felt like this year has already flown by, and so has my time I haven’t spent with the Lord.
It’s funny, I can think of the mornings I would wake up with the intentions to sit and read, but instead looked up houses for sale in Athens, or cleaned up or slept in because I told myself I needed the rest before a wedding weekend or was stressed about something and tried to fix it.
My stress came in quiet. So quiet, I couldn’t even pinpoint what I was worried about. So quiet, I didn’t even want to call it “stress”. I’m a pretty laid-back person, stress is for high strung people– not me! But it compounded every day when I chose to try and muscle through it instead of bringing it to the Lord. And I wasn’t bringing it to the Lord because I’d just get to him tomorrow… I can fix this myself right now.
Under my exterior was a constant furrowed brow. It still is some days!
Plain and simple, the only one who can relieve the weird, slightly suffocating feeling of knowing that things out of our control is Jesus. Looking back, I can see even in the last few months that my circumstances, though they weren’t horrible, would bring a little bit of “uhh, what am I going to do?” to anybody’s thoughts. But, instead of being honest with the Lord and praying my fears to him, I tried to manage them all.
It’s tough… no, it’s impossible to be your own savior.
Stress about our house not being able to sell. Stress about not finding a good house to move into that had all we needed. Stress about family. Stress about friends. Stress about my totaled car. Stress about money. Stress about owning a business. Stress about the future.
I opened my arms so wide to pull back in the things that kept seeping out of my hands and out of my control, and wondered why it wasn’t working.
It’s tough… no, it’s impossible to be your own savior
I wish blog wrap ups could be a little less cheesy, and that saying something like “I feel you if you’re going through anything like this” wouldn’t be so vanilla, but I’ll say it anyways: I feel you. Jesus can unclench your fists, ease your sores, and for God sakes he can help with all the stress that living in today brings.
He reminds me that He is bigger, that life means more than all the go-go-go, that circumstances really stink some days, but he’s got it. He’s always got it.
