Day 11, I’m Just This Way

I was a worrier from birth, or, that is the way I’ve always seen it. Some of my earliest memories were full of worry. I had ulcers at the age of eight. I was on anxiety medicine for heart pain in highschool. In college I started having panic attacks that were so brutal I even called the ambulance once. However, anxiety at this level could not coexist in my world where my husband is an adventurous educated cowboy. I had to deliberately come to grips with my worry when Jovani packed us off to Patagonia, Argentina. My healing began then because I finally chose to believe that anxiety didn’t have to be my identity. 

This was hard. My own mother toted the title of anxiety and was on medication for decades. I could have easily thrown the towel in and said it was inherent, but, though I also believe that some things are passed down from parents, I also believe that God can always choose to heal us. 

There was no flip-a-switch scenario here. I’m still working on that worry. However, it is no longer my master. 

When I coach ladies I see two approaches to chronic issues: “That is just the way I am.” or “This is something I’m working on.” The first slams a door in the face of change and there is nothing that I or the Spirit of God can do until that door starts to budge open again. Now, God might bang on that door, giving you circumstances or situations violent enough to shake the foundations of your life, but He allows us to make a choice. 

Matthew 7:7 says, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” But, we have to ask. And, in order to ask, some part of us has to believe that change and healing is possible, even if it has to come by the hand of our powerful God. 

I want to challenge you today to ask God to work with the part of you that you feel like just can’t change. I know some of you deal with real and deep hurt. Maybe you will never be 100% free of depression or you might always have a physical medical condition. That might be part of God’s plan for you. The difference is, that you can become the person who asks God to strengthen and grow you instead of being the person that throws the towel in and believes that nothing can change. 

Journal prompt: Go to a quiet place and ask God to show you an area that you have denied Him access to out of a belief that it is unchangeable. Ask Him to show you the first baby step forward. What is that step? What do you believe about yourself? What do you believe about God?

---

Listen to the Podcast Here