Getting Unstuck

I'm not gonna lie, I feel a bit beat up lately by life.  It just seems to be one thing after the next and its made my threshold for challenges pretty low.  Monday of last week, I was met with two smaller issues that simply sent me over the edge.

Reality is...life is hard.  It was never meant to be a Thursday night sitcom, where something dumb happens and we figure it out in 30 minutes.  We are going to always have challenges to face.  Some are harder than others.

Emotions like fear, anxiety and anger can become dominating forces that seem to wreak havoc in our daily lives.  

Dr. Caroline Leaf shares in her book, "Think, Learn, Succeed," that fear isn't a innate emotion but a learned state.  We are born into love and fear is a reaction learned from life.  She shares this from a scientific place as a neurologist, but I've seen this unfold in my life and understood its truth as I look at my journey.

I wasn't scared of what would happen to my daughter, until the day one month ago yesterday when I was riding in an ambulance to the ER. (Heck, this morning I saw an ambulance pass by with sirens howling and I started to cry just remembering that day).  In the weeks since that sudden seizure, I have been met with many fearful thoughts.  When she falls or hits her head.  When she starts coughing (what she did before the seizure).  When she looks like something just isn't right.  All of those now bring on an initial fear response.  This has illuminated the truth of Dr. Leaf's research. 

We don't think in "what if" terms until we are met with the reality of worse case scenario.  Fear is an awful beast.  It can be a blessing when it signals danger and we are able to use it to fuel wisdom and get out of a bad situation.  But fear is often misused to control us in ways that keep us emotionally and sometimes even physically paralyzed from living life.  Fear is often a disguised emotion. 

In my years in counseling, one of the biggest light bulb moments was when I realized my anger problem, really wasn't an anger problem but a fear and anxiety problem.  Anger was the beast emerging from me but it was really a signal of internal panic or even stress.  Insecurities, self-imposed pressure or anxiety of the things out of my control unleashed emotions that weren't equal with the weight of the current situation.  

I've seen how important our words are but those words first start as thoughts.  We have to be detectives in discovering who we are and why we are.  This work is important if we ever want to move forward.  I recently heard a talk by Mel Robbins, where she asks, "What is the next chapter of your life?" Introspection is the key to moving forward.  So many things in the physical world, translate well into our spirit/soul world.  Take organizing for example. I don't care who you watch or who your organization Yoda is because they all start at the same place: 

Take it all out.  

If you are going to organize your closet, you first have to get all the clothes and stuff out, then you can determine what you need to keep and get rid of, and then based on what is left decide the right way to organize it.  

The same is true for our thoughts and feelings.  You have to bring them out of cobb webbs and hiding and find out what is there.  Then and only then can you look at what needs to be there and what needs to be replaced.  

Dr. Caroline Leaf says thoughts can be redesigned.  I love that concept.  As long as we keep going in a mindless state, passively allowing life to happen, we will be victims to the mental blocks and bad thoughts that we've allowed to grow.  

Being aware of this new fear response, helps me to redesign the thoughts and move forward with confidence.  As a Christian I believe in a God who has a plan.  It may not always make sense to me, but my God has all the power, but also is a loving God.  Love and power together are a safe zone.  It doesn't mean that everything will turn out perfect, but it does mean that I can trust him, even when it doesn't.  Keeping that fact before me each time I'm faced with my new fear, will be an immense help in finding freedom from the fear. 

Replacing thoughts is not some one and done experience.  You can't read this blog post, think - great point, and just go on in life.  No, there is work that goes into it, that work is daily and takes a while to reach the finish line.  Dr. Caroline Leaf says 63 days is the key for those dendrites to rewire and recreate a new conscious mental pathway. (Check her out - just google search and discover the many ways you can learn about all of this from her).  

Now its your turn, you have a choice. If you don't do the work and develop new habits, nothing will change. What thoughts do have running amok in your head?  Is today the day your evaluate and redesign your thought life? Just know I'm over here with you; a woman in process!

Rejected

I think most of us would love for everyone to like us.

As I look back over the story of my life, I realize, for many years that was my goal, but in order for that to happen, I'd have to change my identity and there is nothing beneficial about doing that.

God made a world full of unique people because he wanted the variety.  He loves each of us, the way he made us, but with that comes the reality that I won't always be liked or well received.

In the center of that reality comes one of my greatest fears.

Its not snakes or spiders, but it is rejection - okay, I'm afraid of snakes too!  Rejection seems to be a haunting reality that speaks to the core of our questioning - "am I good enough?"  Rejection can seem like a megaphone into the depths of our identity, but it doesn't have to be! 

 

No one can speak to my value unless I let them.  The only being able to do so is God and when he was done creating, he said, "It was good."  God has packed me (and you) with value and its my job to allow his voice to stand above any person who might say otherwise.  

In a book I've been working through on anxiety, I've become familiar with a counseling technique to overcome anxiety, called flooding.  Flooding is a method of facing ones fears by jumping into the fear.  The author shares a story about his fear with blood and how one encounter with a burn victim in the ER cured him because his involvement was necessitated by the circumstances.  

Despite the pangs of pain it might create, over the last month or so, I've been motivated to completely uproot any remaining insecurities from my childhood.  Doing so involved facing the "R" word, so I've put myself out there.  In one particular event recently, I asked for connection with people and got rejected - every time!  Over ten requests and not one yes.   But in the process of rejection, I decided to keep going.  It was hard, but I discovered that the rejection wasn't me, because each "no" came with a reason.  Some had legitimate responses, while others seemed more suspect.  I was offering an encounter which would require vulnerability and not everyone can deal with that word, which means it has nothing to do with me.  Despite the discouragement, I did not allow the rejection to speak to my heart.  

Blocking the internalization of that rejection, allowed me to see just how often I inject my own, limited interpretation into the comments, encounters and responses of others and draw conclusions I have no ability to accurately do.  You know the saying, to assume "makes an ass out of you and me." While I'm not sure the origin of that saying, it is pretty accurate.  When we assume we make judgements on partial information, and that can never aid us in knowing people or being known.     

As I referenced last week, Brené Brown, shares in her book, Rising Strong - people are doing the best they can.  If I believe this, then I am required to stop injecting encounters with my own bias. I must instead get more information, be honest with myself and others about the stories I'm creating and must seek to keep going in the midst of obstacles like rejection.  

Truth moment - the fear of rejection is much worse than rejection!  Its not making everyone like you, its finding people who inspire you, share common vision and spark growth that we should add to our tribe.   Beyond that we all have bad days and won't always be in sync even with the best people on the planet.  We must put ourselves out there, because the flip side to rejection is connection and that is something we all desperately need!  You know what else, rejection has its own benefits - I am learning a lot about myself and the world around me.  No experience is completely without merit.  When we survive the challenges we learn what we are made of! 

I don't know what you fear, but I know we all suffer from the human condition and have something that holds us back, the question is, will you let it continue to keep you down?  Break free and chase after the life God intended! You are worth it!

Two Ways To Overcome the Weird In Your Head

I don’t think I’m an ugly woman, but I often think if people could see the mess of junk going on inside my head - they might see a different woman than what’s depicted through the physical body before you.  

Its like that episode of Gilmore Girls where Lorelai is trying to write a letter but the words just don’t come.  Her rant ends in the conclusive line, “its a big bag of weird in there.” This.  This is exactly how I feel.   Sure I am a nice, kind-hearted person and that is beautiful, but there are other sides of me that aren’t so pretty. 

One of those uglies lurking inside is a struggle with anger.  Years of counseling lead me the epicenter of my angry outbursts - anxiety.  

 A little over a month ago, my son had surgery.  He had his tonsils and adenoids removed.  

We got up early and took my daughter to my parents’ house.  

We then made the almost hour drive to the surgery center in Fresno.  

After we got my son checked in and he was wheeled into surgery, my husband and I took our seats in the waiting room.  

That morning had been hard on my anxiety levels, so I decided it was a good idea to get out my binder and start on a worksheet that has been a part of a book I’ve been working through utilizing Cognitive Behavioral Techniques to overcome anxiety. 

One of the many exercises involves writing down all negative thoughts associated with a particular anxiety incident.  Usually, I have a variety of related emotions, but this time they were pretty well concentrated in the fear section of the emotional scale.  

My husband was curious as to what I was doing so I read him my list of negative thoughts associated with this particular day.  When i finished reading my list, my husband, in shock, replied, “I would have never even thought of half of those.”  I wasn’t just worrying about more than he did, I actually had thoughts about particular aspects of the day that didn’t even occur to him! 

This struggle has been so crucial to me because it is incongruous with my religious beliefs.  God tells me to be anxious for nothing (Philippians 4;6).  Its easy to see ways in which our every day life is out of touch with what the Bible calls us to be.  

So what do you do? 

1. Do Your Part

  Instead of beating up on yourself, something I often do, for missing the mark, identify the root.  Take inventory of your thoughts and feelings so you can begin to weed out what doesn’t belong.  You can’t replace the crap until you know its there! 

One of the next steps in the exercise I was doing on the day of my son’s surgery was to write out a positive thought for each of the negative thoughts on which my brain fixated. Its replacing the lie with the truth.  This process, while laborious, is necessary to make sure, how I live and what I believe, stand side by side. 

2. Let God Do The Rest 

I have heard one story where a surgeon performed a ground-breaking operation on himself, but typically a surgeon performs the surgery and the patient lays still, usually unconscious. This is a great picture of our spiritual life.  God does the work in us, sure we may prepare the way for the work with everything I discussed above, like a patient may fast or take certain medications prior to a surgical procedure.  But the rest is God's job.  I can tell you the most meaningful change is when God took my faithfulness and transformed me in the midst of a challenge.   

The encouragement is - God is always working.  Even when we get stuck in a holding pattern and feel like we aren’t getting very far with our goals, God stays the same.  He's always there, using our lives to direct us into the people he created.  He wants to be close to us, and wants to see us reach the stars he designed for us to grab.   

So go do the work you have to do to prepare for the work God is already doing!

If I'm Being Honest

I love to share my life and lessons learned with others. Whether its speaking from a stage, leading a workshop, writing a blog post or just meeting for prayer and coffee with someone,being able to minister to people at the heart level is the pinnacle of fulfillment for me.

But if I am being honest, I've struggled at times with the ministry I do. I am not a perfect person, and its easy to feel like a fraud.  I don't have it all together, I have my own struggles, and I can begin to question what right I have to say anything to anyone?

Then I remember, its not about me.  I don't share, write, pray, listen and talk because I am so great.  I do it because I am not.  I do it because I have walked some roads in life that didn't lead me where I thought they would.  In the midst of all of it, I found hope in Jesus.  I do it because He and I discussed long ago that if I had to face it, He better use it.  I don't want any of the pain I have endured to be worthless.  

I wish I were further along in my journey.  I wish I could check off the boxes in areas where I struggle; despite my current reality, I know:

1. I will get there. 

Philippians 1:6 (NLT) - "And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns."

2. No matter how much my enemy comes against me, God already won, and I have victory!

"You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world." - I John 4:4 (NIV)


I am lucky because I have seen victory in areas of pain in my life.  I had an abusive step-dad growing up that I not only learned to forgive, but God gave me mercy and love for him.  I was happy God brought me into his life so he could know God even with the pain I experienced.

Right after high school, I chose an abortion even though it wasn't what I wanted or believed in.  I can echo the words of Frederica Mathewes-Green when she says, “No woman wants an abortion like she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion like an animal caught in a trap wants to gnaw off its own leg.” When I first read that quote, I was relieved someone got it!  I was haunted after my abortion, but now I can say with certainty - I am free from the slavery I felt after making that choice!

Those two things are just a sampling of the hurdles God has helped me overcome.  That reminder gives me the strength to know I can continue to overcome with God's help. 

This past week, I shared my struggle with anxiety and subsequent anger on my public Facebook page.  This is my current battle, and on a rough day or in a rough moment, that is when the questions arise, but I embrace the journey and hope that those who read this blog will journey with me. 

I know God has victory in store and my God is bigger than my struggles.  I feel blessed for the current resources I am working through because for the first time in a long time I see victory approaching. 

What about you?  What struggles have you down?  Where do you need a boost and encouragement? May I encourage you to continue on!  Don't give up!  Do you know God?  He has a plan for you!  If you have questions, comment below or message me and I am happy to help.  Happy Wednesday!  

One Mistake That Needs To Be Corrected

I have been a Christian since I made that choice for myself at age 4 in my preschool class.  My relationship with God has had its high points and low dips.  There was even a time after some tumultuous years when I verbally told God,

"I don't like what you've done in my life and I was going to take over." 

He let me, and I made an even bigger mess of my life, making two of the biggest mistakes to date. 

Even with that season, I would say I am close to God.  In moments of life, all I have had was God and he showed up in a GIANT way!

I recently put together curriculum for a youth retreat that rocked my soul! I came across a video (that has since been deleted).  It shared words and background set to connect with the song Names of God by Laurell Hubick.   As I watched the video and listened to the words, I began to cry.  Before I tell you why, let me share a story.

I can recall one night, as a junior-high student, going to bed feeling more alone than ever before.  I called out to God saying I needed to be held.  I needed to feel someone hug me, like you would if a human being held another human being.  I went to bed that night and literally felt God's arms around me. 

HE ANSWERED MY PRAYER! 

That God hasn't diminished in my life. 
He is just as big as he ever was. 
He still speaks to me and yet,
I have made a major mistake!

I have let my life become bigger than my God. 

I have allowed anxiety, fear and worries take over and it has become my default to accept the broken circumstances that are handed to me. 

GUESS WHAT?! 

I don't have to. 

That video sparked this awakening in my soul that reminded me of the God I believed in all those years ago in that bed all alone - the God I still follow today.  I realized I am not living in a way that acknowledges the love, gentleness, strength and power of my God. 

My God is
Elohim, my Creator (Genesis 17:7, 8),
he's Jehovah Shammah, The Lord is There (Ezekial 48:35),

Adonai – My Great Lord/My Master – 2 Samuel 7:18-20

El Elyon – Most High God – Genesis 14:20

Yahweh – The Lord I AM – Exodus 3:13-15

Jehovah Rohi – The Lord Is My Shepherd – Psalm 23:1

Jehovah Mekaddishkem – The Lord Who Sanctifies You – Leviticus 20:7-8

Jehovah Tsidkenu – The Lord is Our Righteousness – Jeremiah 23:6

El-Roi – The God Who Sees Me – Genesis 16:7-16

Jehovah Nissi – The Lord Is My Banner – Exodus 17:8-15

El Shaddai – All Sufficient One – Genesis 49:22-26

Jehovah Jireh – The Lord Will Provide – Genesis 22:9-14

Jehovah Rapha – The Lord Who Heals – Exodus 15: 22-26

Jehovah Shalom – The Lord Is Peace – Judges 6:16-24

Jehovah Sabaoth – The Lord of Hosts  - I Samuel 1:3

El-Olam – The Everlasting God – Genesis 21:33

Christ – The Anointed One – Matthew 16:16

Love – God is Love – I John 4:8

Abba – Our Father – Romans 8:15-17

I sat there and confessed where I had strayed and in the next week, God called me to live out what I had confessed. 

Days before the retreat I was to lead, my daughter started to develop symptoms to a virus that would keep any of us from attending.  That wasn't an option.  I began to panic and then I remembered the Names of God.  In that list is God my provider and God my healer.  I took this to him and asked others to pray. 

My mom, as wonderful as she is, spoke words that grabbed me.  She said, "Carrie, God cares more about your daughter and those teens, than you do! He will take care of it." 

I stood in that truth and saw my God work.  My daughter was healed and is fine.  More importantly, I was healed of the anxiety that was plaguing my heart.  Sitting in that truth and resting in all that my God is, I was able to relax.  I knew God had it all worked out the way He wanted and needed it to go, regardless of what happened with my little girl. 

Where have you let life become bigger than God?  Where do you need to rest in God and see him be the BIG, AMAZING God HE IS?!

Maybe you don't know God.  Do you need a Savior?  God is there.  If you are reading this, and like me, you have let God become small, NOW IS THE TIME, to see the BIG GOD you serve.  If you don't have a God but need him, he is also there.  I am here, if you have questions or want to know more, let me know.  God bless you.  Happy Wednesday!!!

5 Tips to Regain Control of Your Life

Life can get going at a rapid pace and we can sometimes feel overwhelmed with the constant demands that nip at our heels each day.  It happens to me more often than I'd like to admit, just read Monday's blog post.  What are we to do to gain control again?  Truthfully, I can't speak to you specifically unless you reach out and give me details on your life, but there are some simple steps that can help you regain control. 

1. Unplug

Think for a minute about all the messages and mediums vying for our attention.  We have text messages, email, television, YouTube, social media private messaging, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Linked In, Instagram, Tumbler, Pinterest etc.  So many ways to get information and that didn't even include the newsfeed built-in to your phone home page or computer web-browser.  Its no wonder we feel stressed out and tired, we are getting too many messages.  If you begin to feel like you are on this treadmill that keeps getting the speed increased, its time to get off the media train and take some time to shut down the many methods of input.  Maybe you can't go without it all for your job, but if you are being honest, you could easily find hours reaching or even exceeding the double digits of unnecessary media time.  That movie or latest episode of your favorite show can wait.  You can take the social media apps off your phone or turn off certain notifications so you aren't clicking to see each like or comment. 

2. Be Silent, Be Still

If you are as old or older than me, you may remember a movie in 1999 called, "She's All That."  There is a scene where during a piece of live art, the actors chants, "Be Silent, be still," repeatedly.  It brings home the point that we need to bring all the noise to a stop.  If the mess of noises listed above weren't bad enough, we have a few more bouncing around our brain.  They can be summed up with one word - expectations.  We allow the voices of others in our lives and even our own self-talk, to bring craziness to our thoughts with an endless supply of limitations and criticisms.  It's time to shut it out and just silently be still.  That may be meditation for you or it may look more like what Craig Groeschel describes in his 5 minutes of quiet each day.  Just take time, even if its 5 minutes to sit quietly.  It may seem awkward at first, but you will grow to appreciate what it offers you. 

3. Put on your Mask

I don't know who you are or what you do, but I bet involves taking care of others.  That my friends is an amazing part of life, but sometimes we give and give without any balance of caring for ourselves.  Its become cliché, but truly the airlines know what they are speaking to when they tell you to put on your oxygen mask before assisting smaller travelers.  If you put the mask on our child first, you could pass out in the process due to your bodies need for oxygen.  You need to sleep, eat, exercise at minimum.  If you are like me you also need relational time to fill that love tank.  My mom suffers from Thoracic Outlet Syndrome and needs to go to certain yoga and water aerobics classes each day to manage the pain levels.  It is a need.  If she ignores it she becomes debilitated by pain.  If I ignore my need for relationships I can become debilitating depressed.  I don't know what that looks like for you but its time to figure it out and schedule it so that you have what it takes to do your life. 

4.  Choose Gratitude

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and honestly its a holiday we have all but forgotten.  Its just become a day off work to stuff our faces (and now start Christmas shopping) instead of a season of gratitude.  Gratitude prepares our hearts and minds to center our souls between reality and desires.  Gratitude allows us the ability to recognize what we have.   Let's face it, if you spent $2.50 today, you are doing better than 50% of the population (I know I've quoted this before) but isn't it something to celebrate?!  Each situation has a positive and negative spin and its your choice to pick a path.  Gratitude quiets the unsettlings inside ourselves. It keeps us rooted in the here and now and keeps us from either living in the past or too focused on what's next.  What are you grateful for in this one moment?  I once sat in the woods for 5 hours and during time made a list of everything I could think of that I was grateful for from birth until that very moment.  It was a humbling and truly rewarding experience.  Its time I do it again.  Focus on what is beautiful in your life.  Sometimes it does take some digging but it can be that one thing in the midst of the storm we face that can bring us comfort.

5. Re-evaluate

Greg McKeown's book "Essentialism: The Discipled Pursuit of Less" or Marie Kondo's books on tidying up both bring to our attention the need for re-evaluation of what we are aiming at in life.  When we hold onto things and develop a hoarding mentality or we overwork ourselves in an effort to do it all, we are creating dysfunctional habits and aren't aiming at anything.  The result isn't satisfaction and success, but instead stress and anxiety within an unsettling reality.  We must pause long enough to look at see what we want from life and if our current daily actions support or fight against our goals.  If this is an area of struggle for you, I suggest you check out one of the resources I listed at the beginning of this paragraph.  Get some tools to working smarter, not harder.

Spiritual Life - Finding Nemo Epiphany

Lately, my son has been on a "Finding Nemo" kick. So I have seen it several times over the past few weeks.

Often children's movies and books lead me to ponder spiritual concepts, and this is no exception. As I have been watching, my mind has wandered to the issue of my anxiety and fear. In previous posts I have talked about my fears and how this year I was facing them. A recent trip to the counselor's office, revealed a huge amount of anxiety that I just live with on a regular basis. The great news for me personally is that our discussion was in fact an answer to prayer because I have been asking God, "Why am I so easily angered?" I can now see a direct link between my issues with anger and my level of anxiety. Now I can attack it head on. I've started with an anxiety journal to track my freak outs and the roots of them. It has really placed me in a quandary, questioning what I am even afraid will happen if my "worst case scenario" were to actually happen or what that even looks like. I know most of it comes from some of the negative experiences I walked through as a child. The things that made to question God.

When I watch Marlin in "Finding Nemo" I see a fish with the same issues that I face. His character experiences an act of fear and subsequent loss. That one act paralyzes him from living. Fear has him limiting his experiences and his son's (did you ever think a Disney movie would ever spawn such a deep thought?)and then he faces another barrier when Nemo is taken. That leads him on this adventure where he stares in the face of all that his mind could ever fear. At some point he just has to give in to the journey and trust. There is no more reasoning and others are acting on his behave without his knowledge and he just has to have faith. Who knew Dory actually spoke Whale and the Whale wasn't going to eat them but help them?!

Who knew the umpteenth time of watching this beloved Disney story, that it would speak to me exactly where I am in life right now. I can't control every detail of my life. Worrying about it doesn't help, yet I walk out in fear and anxiety about things out of my control because its what I've done for so long, its my auto-response. Taking a step back, a deep breath and asking myself some reflective questions are the start to a new life of just trusting in God when its out of my control. Its asking him for guidance when it is a decision I have to make and trusting him walk it out with me.

If we are all being honest, I believe we get good at living life in autopilot. Stop. Take a deep breath and join me: question your choices, your routine, your reactions and begin to reprogram the answers that do not make any sense. And when the whale says, "let go." Just do it, and embrace your inner Dory.