- Not The Only One !
- Post # 153
- 19 Sept 24
- ” Ain’t All That “
- Howdy,
- I’m going to start referring to you guys as family as in an online community. Some of you have become near and dear to me . As for the rest of you guys it’s an open invitation to join and buy in , and to remember, even when we disagree, we can still be * Cordial and polite towards one another. I just love it when someone or something can have a new or significant impact on my thoughts and thinking about something in a way that I hadn’t previously viewed or seen in a certain light. I’m kind of a concrete person for the most part. What I mean by that is I’m usually pretty comfortable in my own skin and know the things that I believe and stand for and can defend those positions in a healthy debate without raising my voice in passion, or resorting to name calling out of frustration, because perhaps my argument is fueled by more emotion than factual information ☺️☺️. Heads up and if you guessed feelings and emotions today, proceed to go and collect two hundred dollars ☺️☺️. Yes, we are talking monopoly money ☺️
- I’m probably going to skip around a little bit today and I know that some of you are thinking….what else is new☺️☺️. Let’s start off with fear, it’s a pretty common emotion that just about everyone has experienced at one time or the other. Fear can be healthy at times, as when it comes to the whole fight or flight thing, but fear can also be debilitating and crippling. We can be fearful about almost anything, from being late for work, failing an exam, a bad medical diagnosis, right up to and including death and that last one is a date that we all have to keep, we just don’t know when to mark it on the calendar ☺️☺️. Sometimes our fears are real and legitimate and sometimes they are irrational, and as a classic ” overthinker” ☺️☺️ , I’m not unfamiliar with those. ☺️ We don’t usually like naming what those fears are, because it’s normally expressed as some form of a weakness, otherwise we would just face it head on and handle it. The other great concern is it leaves us exposed and vulnerable. So! We have a fear of some sort and then we get to or have to double down on it by being vulnerable, that just seems down right unfair ☺️☺️. I will add this to the equation, often fear holds great power over us because it is something hidden in the dark. It can hold us hostage and acts as a form of emotional blackmail. If you think that is extortion against yourself, then you just earned yourself a gold star☺️☺️. There are several autoimmune diseases out there, so we shouldn’t be surprised that we can be overly self critical of ourselves, not giving examples, you guys just know ☺️☺️
- So much of fear is individual and specific to individuals. Someone may be afraid to death about roller-coasters, but many just see it as fun and an opportunity to enrich a chiropractor somewhere down the road☺️☺️. Sometimes fears fall into the category of phobias and that can be something chronic and another whole animal all together. I have met an* agoraphobic before and that’s no fun, if you are unfamiliar with, it’s the fear of going outside. So phobias can be anything from a fear of heights or a fear of clowns ☺️☺️. I’m not usually a person who falls victim to many fears, but I do have a couple and I’m not sure if they are valid or just irrational thoughts. One is I’m afraid I’m going to grow into an old grumpy crusty old man who doesn’t care about how long my ear hair gets☺️☺️, might be halfway there☺️☺️. My other fear is I’m afraid of becoming my mother ☺️☺️. It’s not that my mother is a bad person, but it’s the whole aging thing….not a fan☺️☺️. My mother has always been a pretty sharp person, but there is something about technology that can make many of us look very pedestrian ☺️☺️. It’s just not that, but the aging process , but the things that they gravitate towards just leaves her exposed for some unkind individuals to take advantage of her. If you are unaware of this, there is this great exchange, where you actually become the parent and they turn into the child. No disrespect, they just need someone to watch over them just more closely than before . It’s just a little scary seeing them, not the way that You have known them to be your entire life.
- God created us to be spirit, physical, but also emotional, but I don’t think that He intended for us to be ruled by our emotions. It doesn’t matter how old we get to be, if we are ruled by our emotions , we are just seen as a three year old toddler, who doesn’t know how to rationalize or express themselves without throwing a fit, yelling and screaming, the only thing missing is falling out on the floor, and that’s probably because you aren’t sure if you could get back up or not☺️☺️. It seems that we are always concerned about how others perceive us, but that seems to go completely out the window when we are being passionate about our favorite political party or our favorite sports franchise ☺️☺️. Yes, passion and zeal are also emotions and they serve a purpose in the proper context. Christ , Himself displayed both passion and zeal when He encountered the money changers in the Temple.
- Frustration is another little monster to wrestle with. This is another one of those things that I have observed with my mom. She keeps a pretty active social life for a person of her age. It’s sometimes, almost as if she is running from death, that’s not actually it☺️☺️. I see her get frustrated when she has a conflict in her social calendar and she gets upset when she just can’t get it all in. It’s as she has lost her ability to rationalize and prioritize , which is more meaningful to her and holds more value and worth to her. Maybe she has it right and it’s just my laissez-faire attitude of not caring or desiring to be in two different completely places simultaneously ☺️☺️
- I know that we aren’t that far removed from a global pandemic and two of the of the biggest byproducts of that appears to be anxiety and depression. I get that both of those things are very real and I want to say a clear and present danger to our culture , society, but primarily to ourselves and those who love us. I am by no means trying to minimize or somehow lessen the gravity of those two things, but perhaps frame them in a different context, especially when it comes to anxiety. I started out with the idea or concept of viewing something in a different light, or to change our approach to it. I have this fundamental belief that we are more than our emotions as they will often drag us off and away from things in life that are sometimes to, often more important. I actually want to be a little bit more forceful and just say that we are not our emotions, but significantly more.
- When it comes to anxiety we are often told that the best thing to do is to try and eliminate it, much like it’s close cousin stress☺️☺️. We look at and treat it much like we would diabetes or cancer. We very rarely are encouraged to identify with and to move towards it, as in what is causing the anxiety. We know that we have it, we can see the results of it , and we can name it, but what is that driving force behind it? We usually have more than just one thing going on in our heads at one time. I think that we live at such a pace that there are things that were on our plates that fail off, but we so rapidly move on to the next thing that we never take the time to evaluate what has taken place in our anxiety leader board☺️☺️. Just completely forget about thanking God for getting you through it. When we get to the bottom line, anxiety is just another form of a fear. It transports us to some future unknown outcome, and we just set up shop and live there, for whatever reason and for some unspecified amount of time☺️☺️. In the world wind of our minds , we relinquish control over to anxiety, instead of taking an actual inventory of the anxiety prompter. None of us know the future and in all reality the things that we think that we know of and are pretty sure of, will often turn out to be something different from what we were hoping for or imagining. I could just take a piece of low hanging fruit and say by a show of hands, how many divorced people out there, ever saw that left turn taking place in their lives. I will be the first to say that I didn’t see that one coming☺️☺️.
- Sometimes people will keep a food diary to keep track of what they are actually consuming, or a budget to see where your money flies away to so quickly ☺️☺️. I would encourage you to keep a journal or log of all of the things that You have been anxious about and to see how few of them were actually worthy of all of the worry and concern. Something about human nature draws us towards the nuclear, and by that I mean worse case scenario. It’s like we would prefer a thousand little cuts as we bleed out , instead of just getting a gun and getting it over with ☺️☺️. No!, I’m not encouraging suicide, but why salivate over something that in all likelihood is going to be a none factor in the grand scheme of things.
- Do I dare even suggest or hint at anxiety being a good thing , in that it can help us focus in on short term goals and objectives. It becomes both harmful and and counter productive when it becomes long term or chronic, such as worrying about a wedding that is over a year away ☺️☺️. When we have really big things in our lives such as a wedding or preparing for the birth of a child, it’s super helpful if we can some how segment it. Breaking things down in to smaller, more manageable chunks is a great way to handle things that wish to push us into anxiety overload. When we luminate over anxiety for extended periods of time,; it can and will often lead to depression. This is going to sound childish, because it is something that I learned from a child ☺️☺️. My daughter when she was little, would be upset about something, perhaps a boo boo, a scent knee or bruised finger. As she was crying at the top of her lungs, she could be *dissuade from whatever it was by being distracted in another direction. It could be a toy, a game or just swinging her through the air, that would lessen the other thing. There are times when we should unplug and distract ourselves with something else. It’s really hard to focus on whatever your thing is, if you are actively serving someone else.
- Ok, a little truth, I have lived with someone who has been on antidepressants and anti anxiety drugs, so I know what that is like. I’m also aware that those chemicals change the complexity of your brain and sometimes your body adapts and sometimes those drugs cease to be effective. It’s like me mixing up my allergy drugs, because sometimes one will stop working and cease to be effective. That being said, if you need them and they work for you, then by all means take them, but we have to realize that we are treating the symptoms and it’s not a cure. In my case, there was a deep hurt and it had never been dealt with, in fact it had been suppressed and buried for decades. As I said earlier, a big part of our make up is spiritual and out of that, the other parts of us learn to thrive or just go into some low level of just surviving. There has just got to be more than just surviving or living in a chronic state of anxiety.
- We don’t know what the future holds and if we are completely honest, we don’t know if our heart is going to give out in the next five minutes or some other strange thing like being struck by lightning. Low probability, but not completely out of the question ☺️☺️. So , now we get to the heart of the matter and it’s actually about control. It’s that unknown future event that I don’t know if I’m up for what the unknown future may posses or inject into my story. I don’t know the future, but I do know who holds the future. The things that we don’t know and can’t know, God knows! God’s cure for anxiety is to trust Him. Trust Him with it all, not just the really big things that we know are way beyond us, but also with the things that seem small and insignificant. He cares about it all and has insight to it all. It’s often those small and insignificant things that can turn into big unmanageable juggernaut , because they weren’t addressed properly in the first place . It’s the failing to discipline your children when the were small or missing out on date night for the third time in a row☺️☺️.
- Sometimes God expresses things in a simple manner, that are far from being anything simple at all. This is how I view Philippians 4: 6, when God says be anxious for NOTHING, or No Thing, but pray about everything, tell Him what your request are and with Thanksgiving, thank Him for all that He has done. As I said earlier, we don’t usually have a problem with the telling Him or the asking for things and desired results, but we aren’t always in the house of thankfulness. Most times off to the next thing. ☺️ God will often command us to be still and we are fidgety like a five year old who wants to go outside and play. If we aren’t still, it can make it hard for us to hear his voice or to see and understand what He is trying to accomplish in us and through our lives. The very next verse in Philippians promises peace that passes all understanding, and who doesn’t want that one?…sign me up☺️☺️
- Truth be told we live in a very busy and fast pace world that is constantly spiraling in one direction or the other. All to many times we want whatever it is just resolved. If it’s pain, we want it to stop and no one in their right mind, just says sign me up for suffering ☺️☺️. God works in those moments and His huge gift to us in challenging times is His presence. We never walk alone into any trial or circumstance. I know that the word master is out of favor, but we have to remember that anxiety is not the Boss of us. God adds both depth and perspective and the pressures of life are much more bearable and usually laced with some teachable moments . Let’s put anxiety In it’s proper place and remember that it does answer to God, when we choose to submit it to God as a prayer concern or request. The next time that anxiety comes knocking at your door and demanding first place in your life, just let it talk to the ✋️ hand. You remember that one, talk to the hand as in I don’t want to hear what you have to say. Turn those hands into praying hands and remember that anxiety ” Ain’t All That ”
- Till Next Time ✌️ Peace!
- Sandy The Southerner
- Reply
- ,
- Reply All
- or
- Forward
Send
