Are you stressed under? Does everything feel like it’s heaped on top of you and you’re unable to wriggle out from beneath the pile?
Do you feel like one of those trees you see beside Southern highways that’s covered with great green gobs of kudzu?
If so, you need an intervention before your hope gets smothered under there. Not to scare you, but hopelessness is a very real possibility. Its seeds are planted amid relentless exhaustion and you don’t realize it’s taken root and started to kudzu your spirit until you can no longer envision a tomorrow that isn’t as bleakly stressful as today.
With our attention splintered a dozen ways at once, the symptoms of being overly stressed can blindside us: unexplained upset stomach, headaches, muscle or joint pain, irritability, inability to focus, insomnia, sudden outbursts of anger, binge-eating or loss of appetite, chronic fatigue, sullenness and a lack of interest in things you used to enjoy.
Any of these chirp your ringtone?
Okay then. It’s time to take care of your own needs for a while. Your body is telling you (gut problems), your spirit is telling you (yes, it absolutely is spiritual warfare!) and your emotions are telling you (anxiety): Help! I need a change!
When the jeans on your attitude are inflicting a wedgie, you need to unbutton. Adjust. Loosen your uptight. Anxiety is Satan’s best tool to burn us out.
But Papa God provides a solution if we choose to take it: “Do not be anxious about anything, but through everything, with supplication and thanksgiving, let your requests be known unto God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus,” (Phil 4:6-7).
~Adapted from my new book, Too Blessed to be Stressed for Moms.
