It’s not something I quite like to admit, but my life has been speckled with a bit of anxiety and dented with some sorts of depression
Alright, I’ve just now decided I might as well full confess and not give a care about it
My life is MOSTLY tainted by anxiety
And.. I’ve had a few semi-deep sinkholes of “depression”
God and I, though, we figure it out. We are good buddies, Him and I. We have figured it out together through all of it. And yes I could have done better, I could always do better. Because, well, am I personally ever really at my best? HAH I accidentally and always make things harder than they have to be.
Yet, you know what?
Yeah sometimes I’m walking deserts for days; but night eventually comes and there’s sweet relief from the seemingly never-ending of the scorching of the sun
Or I’m spiraling in a giant ocean swirl, where I’m dizzy and confused and I can only look down to see where I might end up
BUT, eventually…I figure out how to rely on God
Sure
It takes me awhile and I’ve wasted much time in the process [the process of living], but I arrive. Sometimes too late, but arrive I do, I always arrive. It’s any wonder though, that I forget to come to God and lay all in front of Him BEFORE I come into a crisis, every single time….
Anxiety lessened when I turned eighteen. It was no longer my every day. Hmm what else happened at eighteen? My faith in God grew exponentially and my foundation became so sturdy. And as well as all that, my stomach pains started and have plagued me since.
I also came to realize around that time, that the annoying Israelites who frustrated me so, were no worse than I. They wandered the wilderness in circles, forgetting that divine food from heaven fell before them, forgetting that they were NO LONGER SLAVES.
Oh how they annoyed me, “God WHY did you waste Your time with them?”
Lord,
Why do you waste Your time with me?
God? Hmm?
Okay my lot is with the Israelites
And I am much more grateful for Your patience, Lord,
And the world is also filled with extra gratitude knowing that I MYSELF am not God.
I used to have stomach aches only if I were anxious. They would leave if my anxiety left. But after eighteen, they would come on their own and not leave for days. In a strange turn of events, these stomachaches sometimes make my anxiety come back, as if they are forever linked.
My mind can become one of two things in unhealth
A flurry of thoughts that will not settle in their proper places,
Dancing dust motes in a ray of sun through the window pane amidst the mess and the warmth of a seemingly peaceful room.
Hello my enemy of old, Anxiety.
OR, my least favorite
A disconnected, dimming light, curled up at the end of a dark and drafty tunnel.
Feeling lessens, emotions lessen
I want nothing more than to retreat away from humanity, body matching mind
It is hard to navigate a human body when mind is nearly dying far away. Hmm, Depression, I am not a fan.
Freedom.
God has brought me so much freedom in my life
Haha freedom from myself.
And all of that seems vulnerable to attack this month.
I do not know much about spiritual warfare.
I THOUGHT I did, and I believed that I believed in it, and I DID, or I do. But I feel I am more blind to it than I previously believed.
Like a morning fog at dawn, anxiety is trying to creep over me
Stirring things up, knocking ideas emotions and feelings off their proper places on the shelves of my brain.
It has been almost three weeks since I have begun to feel the evidence of it’s presence, And one little day, I was carried to the back of that tunnel, my light fading away.
I read in Captivating —it IS a good book, so very good, despite the foofoo fluffiness of trying to encourage women, I mean God knows we all need encouraging though— that Stasi, the writer, had been plagued by slight dizzy spells her entire life. Her husband, a Christian counselor, came home one day saying how many of the people he had been counseling were having spiritual attacks of dizziness. When Stasi admitted her case, that she had suffered from dizziness and that it had become her norm, they decided she should pray against them whenever they appeared. Maybe they were spiritual attacks. Well, by the power and authority of Christ she prayed. They would stop in the moment during prayer, but came with a growing frequency and intensity, till finally one day her dizziness was so great that she fell to the floor. She prayed with a mighty authority from God, and has never had a dizzy spell since.
Again, I realize I don’t know much about spiritual warfare in my own life, I bury things and I don’t like to blame anything but my own self
I feel like I’m excusing myself if I blame Satan.
[family, if you’re reading this thinking “you also think it’s fun to blame us!” I assure you, if ever I try to shift anything upon you, it is in the desperate hope that you will take off of me what is rightfully mine]
This week, this day
When I came quietly before God, feeling tired, and much like a swamp monster trying to hide under the murk so no one would notice that I was a swamp monster…hiding in the murk…
My tiny lifeless thoughts reached up and attempted at a cry for help.
But also,
I cannot be helped, this is me.
Two different thoughts formed in my mind
“Ask for a friend”
“Hide from all people, never speak again”
I opened my bible, sitting behind the curtains in the nook of a window seat upon the second floor of our stay. This swamp monster needed a little light from the window. Don’t worry, true to my swamp monster self—I kept the curtains closed, barring everyone from the dreamy bog I hid in. Also, there was a dead fly in there with me.
1 Samuel chapter 17 is where I am at at the moment
David and Goliath
“Darnit God, I already know this story —its fun but nothing new nor exciting nor profound
I wanted You to SPEAK to me, give me an eye-opener.”
- Sorry God for being a swamp brat
- Open my eyes HE SURELY DID
Sure some of us “know” the courage of David, He was a man after God’s heart yada yada yada [I quite like David despite how that sounded]
The Israelites were actually afraid of this Philistine Champion named Goliath
Goliath demanded they send one man to fight him, rather than that the armies of the Philistines and the armies of the Israelites fight. If the man of Israel won, the philistines would become their servants; and vice versa.
Goliath was tall and strong and .. quick thought, I wonder if he was incredibly handsome or if he was a giant hairy beast of a man.
I would like to say handsome, for no reason other than it would make the story more tragic and I love a good tragedy. Yes LOOKS MATTER sometimes and it is far more devastating to see a handsome giant’s head sliced off than it is to see a scary beast slain. Also slicing off heads reminds me of how I slaughtered chickens at the farm last month..
Do you ever wonder why each person is allowed so much freedom to write whatever the heck they want upon The World Race Website? Like WHEN will my airhead thought processes END, you’re thinking. Or at least when will I willfully decide to not share them with anyone else? Who knows? I am going to choose to not take responsibility for my own actions.
I’ve had too much coffee today, but that WAS four hours ago and the time frame in which I can keep blaming all my actions upon that today is dwindling. Also the people I have used that excuse to today, is impressive. Considering some are not even in this country. If i have lost everyone, you’ve shut off your computer and moved on partway through this post, than I do not blame you whatsoever. I still blame coffee
Okay, GOLIATH. For forty days the Israelites were too CHICKEN [oh yikes, slicing off chicken heads] too chicken to volunteer to fight him. David came around the battlefield visiting his brothers one fine day when he overheard the war situation. And he said, “WHO is this Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?”
And to King Saul, he stated, “Let no man’s heart fail because of him, Your servant will go and fight with this Philistine. The Lord, who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear WILL DELIVER ME from the hand of this Philistine.”
Oh the courage and faith of David.
He basically said, I don’t care WHO this guy is but he dares defy the armies of the living God? The LIVING GOD the one true God who lives and works in and through us each and every day?
“Then David said to the Philistine, ‘You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the LORD WILL deliver you into my hand, and I WILL strike you down and cut off your head. And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there IS a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear. For the BATTLE IS THE LORD’S AND HE WILL GIVE YOU INTO OUR HAND.”
THE BATTLE IS THE LORD’S AND THE BATTLE IS WON
Oh this is just too good, I’m trying to pick and choose but I’m freaking writing the entire chapter. Too good because here is a tie-in to so many things I’m learning this year.
One, God used David AS HE WAS with no nothin
Just a sling and a stone
Two, David declared that victory was God’s and the enemy is lost
regardless of him knowing the outcome.
Three,
“David ran quickly TOWARD the battle line to meet the Philistine.”
We still need to take action! Yah we have faith in God that He has won but yes we can’t curl up in a ball and hope everything works out. We have faith that God will work it out through and with us.
Prayer is incredibly powerful and important, and when we are being attacked either by our flesh or Satan, it’s all the more reason to fight back harder and to truly trust and pray to God
“So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and struck the Philistine and killed him. There was NO sword in the hand of David.”
Not a soldier “just a shepherd”
God used him as he was
With what he knew
Sling and stone
To defeat a giant man of war.
A single stone to the forehead and he was down
And a slice to the throat. Yikes, chickens
David had RUN forward to the line of battle, he didn’t slink back as he frantically loaded his slingshot. He ran forward.
This month seems fraught with jabs from the enemy. Little attacks from the side of evil for all of us here, and to each his own.
I started thinking about spiritual attacks at the beginning of this month, and have had a few revelations of where I’ve let things slide or get me down. Of course when I hear “you’re a disappointment and don’t ask anyone for encouragement or help” when I’m bummed, and I LISTEN well, crap, I’m letting the enemy WIN! Because then I’m a terrible friend, don’t want to do ministry, don’t want to continue living life courageously….as I sink further into a mud hole.
In Thailand, we had the Awakening
—a conference with many different sessions. During worship to my Jesus, people in the front were praying for us. I wanted to go up and ask for prayer, but then a feeling overcame me—“you don’t need to ask anyone for prayer…whatever you’re working on, do it alone.” Well one lovely human, a girl I had never met before from another squad, came up to me and said “Jesus, I pray against this spirit of aloneness in her.”
…alone? Not lonely, but purposefully alone. I like to be alone, I like to meander off and adventure and stay nearby my people but not commit. I like to be alone when I’m a swamp monster.
How many times have I given in, or let the enemy whisper lies to me and win?
Immediately after that I felt the truth of her words and a sudden excitement that God was speaking to me, because she also prayed a few more things that were in my head. And she didn’t know anything about me. I was so honored that God loves me so much He wanted me to hear Him in that moment.
Why would I choose to believe what Satan says, instead of what God says? So often I do, though.
Right after that moment of happiness, I shut down. “You know what NO I like being my own person, I don’t need to ask anyone for anything.” And I felt “aloneness” more than ever before.
God sheds light on something
Satan attacks
Every.
Time.
I am living in freedom,
But
Satan comes up behind me and puts my mind in a cage
And I let him
I circle the cage asking for help—and not listening to God telling me the door is wide open, because I’m too afraid to walk toward it
I learn to lean on others
Then suddenly, the next day I never want to speak to another human again
My faith in God grows, Satan uses my dumb stomach pains to grab hold of me and attack with anxiety.
But the battle, it is the Lord’s battle, and He. Has. Won.
And I won’t hide behind a rock or in a cage, but I will run to the battle line with the cheesy but not cheesy armor of God
A sling, and a stone
Seemingly weak
Mysteriously strong
And I will fight, I will believe in the victory of Jesus
And I will rest in the comfort of His love.
God has been teaching me to give Him more authority in EVERY area of my life
To keep handing Him all that I’m carrying
That when praying, and things come harder
That does not give me the right to give up! All the more so FIGHT and rely on God.
