Midday Musings: The Heart's Kryptonite

I'm not sure why I'm here today. I was thinking about what kind of blog post I was going to put out this week...something about relationships? organization? another printable? I love to post light-hearted things because this world is full of doom and gloom. I want this blog to be a place of peace and easy joy. A place that provides inspiring and helpful content, a safe space where hope can be found.

I want this blog to be a place of thoughtful assessment. Of ourselves, of our relationships with others and with our world. I want it to encourage a closer relationship with God, whom I would be nothing without.

So again, I say I'm not sure why I'm here today. My heart is heavy with burden but joyful with praise. I don't know if what I'm writing is supposed to help anyone, or it's simply my cathartic release.

With that said, I'm not going to try and organize this post as I usually do. I'm just going to flow and hopefully something hits home for you.

Fear.

I have an intimate relationship with fear. It's a relationship that I don't know when it started, but it has been around for so long that I could call it family. 

Fear is the sibling nobody wanted, the friend that was asked to leave but never left. It has a grip on most everything we do, impacting what decisions are made and how we live our life. 

Anxiety is something that has crept up on me. Though fear has always been around, anxiety and its symptoms have come suddenly. 

I know I've shared before that I'm an introvert. No question, I get maxed out on social time rather quickly. But I've always been able to handle myself in public. It's interesting how our 'personality' adapts depending on our stage in life. When I was a teenager, I realized that in order to get myself out there to eventually find a mate, I'd have to socialize. Sounds primitive, and in a way it is. I pushed my disdain for networking aside and fooled most people into thinking I was extroverted. Not surprising to say that when I did start dating my husband and understood that this would lead to marriage, all such surplus socializing stopped. Socialization with my closest friends continued, but no more did I feel like I needed to push myself, force myself to be someone I truly wasn't. 

But something happened during that time. I still don't know what it is. Somehow during this teenage period I developed an anxiety that I never knew before. I started having halting speech. I won't call it a stutter because that's not really what it is. Randomly, if not suddenly--my mouth started talking faster than my brain was processing. 

At first I didn't notice it, I just thought I was trying to talk too fast. But as the months went by, I realized that what was happening was not just careless talk. Something wasn't right. 

So I started paying attention to it, noting when it happened and when it didn't happen. I talked to my mom about it and we both thought quizzically about it because I never had any issues in my childhood. 

I realized that it was definitely related to nervousness and acquaintances, or people with power. It didn't happen around my husband, it didn't happen around family or my closest friends. 

Everyone gets nervous, and anxiety is an essential human reaction to new circumstances. But seeing the confused look in people's eyes when I'm struggling to get something out is so disheartening. It's even more annoying when the problem came on suddenly and randomly. 

I thought about stress. Yes there was stress in my life when this issue arose...but these stresses have passed and dissipated, yet the problem persists. 

What's happening, I don't know. Why it's happening, I couldn't tell you. But isn't that to be said about most every negative or inconvenient thing that happens in our lives? 

We spend so much time fearing things that probably won't happen, and if they did, we'd have no control over it anyway. What's the point of fear? There is none, and yet we continue to relish in it under the guise of 'planning' and 'thinking ahead'. And yet, tomorrow's never promised. 

Matthew 6:34 is so powerful for me and always calms my spirit every time I read it:

"So don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today's trouble is enough for today. (NLT)

Or The Message version puts it this way :

“Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes. - Matthew 6:24

If you're like me and you've struggled with fear, worry and anxiety before, you know that today has enough worries.

I read something before in a devotion that was so powerful to me. It was talking about how people who worry live in the future. They spend all their time overthinking what will or could happen, that the present is taken for granted. Similarly, those that struggle with unforgiveness live in the past, ruminating over the hurtful things that have been done to them. As someone who has struggled, and continues to struggle with both, it's easy for me to miss the mark and enjoy the moment in the fullest way possible. Relish in the present. We so often forget that the present will soon become the past and the past soon becomes your life.

Unforgiveness.

Like I said before, this is another kryptonite for me. Within the past year God has really opened my eyes to this fact, and although it evokes feelings of shame, I'd much rather know my weaknesses than not know where my attacks will be coming from. 

But through this weakness, God has shown his strength and healing power. I have finally had the courage to confront some of these instances and literally decide that that was enough. 

It's sad how sometimes we make great victories in our lives but because by the time they happen we were ready for it, we forget how incredible these accomplishments really are. 

Within the past year I let go of a grudge that I'd been holding for over 14 years. When I tell you that there is liberating power in forgiveness, there is NOTHING like it. I've seen God break down walls that I had spent years and YEARS building around myself. Walls that I thought would take the same if not twice as long to work through. 

There is healing in forgiveness. I know what it's like not to be ready to forgive, and I know what it's like to have to continually forgive because the same person was responsible for consistent hurts. I'll say it again, there is healing in forgiveness. Don't give up on it, I did many times. But I've been freed and you can be too.

Joy.

Through all that I have gone through, Lord it's been You. 

Todd Dulaney's song Pulling Me Through is so simple and so real for me. For most of us I would say. 

My life has never been perfect. I'd say my life now is the closest to perfection it's ever been, and yet struggle still surrounds me. Though hardships seem to be a common theme in the narrative of my life, joy is the soundtrack. 

Though hardships seem to be a common theme in the narrative of my life, joy is the soundtrack. 

In the darkest night, at the most hopeless hour, the joy of the Lord has been my strength.

It's inexplainable, it's unheard of, it's ludicrous. And yet it is.

Life with God is like this. There's no reason for it, it makes no sense...and yet it is.

I don't always know what's happening in my world, in my life, even in my speech. But God has always been with me, and has always given me a joy that I can't explain, cannot contain.

I could list everything that's seemingly not working out for me right now, list the things that months, almost a year later I'm still waiting on, and still be satisfied with my life.

My life is not for me. I live my life to worship my Saviour. I live my life to impact others through sharing this Saviour. When this is your life's focus, no career, no relationship, no title or lack thereof can make your life unsatisfying.

The struggle is real, but the joy and strength of the Lord is realer.
Stronger.