Real Hope: Overcoming Stress and AnxietyНамуна

Learning from Stress and Anxiety

Let’s face it: everyone will experience stress and anxiety at some point in their lives . They are not popular emotions; however, like physical pain when we are injured, stress and anxiety try to tell us that something in our life is tough and we need to take care.

Self-care is not something that I am great at, but I am learning. I think, often as people of faith, our hearts are so attuned to blessing others that we forget to listen to what our own emotions and body are trying to tell us. 

Growing up, I was a cross-country runner. I learned to push through the pain barrier and stop listening to my body as I ran along bush tracks and sandy beaches. I took that learning into my nursing where my ability to stay focused, especially during an emergency, meant often being given the most critical care load and double shifts when staffing was stretched. As I became a mother and a pastor, I leaned into life with faith, love, and this same endurance. My body had to scream at me in stress before I chose the hard process of relearning to listen to my body and invest in self-care of body, mind, and spirit. I discovered that slowing down to reflect and listen to early feelings of stress and anxiety became a reminder that burning out is a waste of a life. 

God asks us to bring all of ourselves to Him, including our anxiety, which means we need to be able to name it and slow down enough to consider how a caring God would want us to trust the source of our stress and anxiety to Him. This life verse reminds me that God wants us to access all the help He has given us, resourced in heaven and on earth.

Written by Kath Henry

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