Category: Joy

Days Like Today

Today has been hard.

Recently I started a Bible study about spiritual warfare. The enemy knows our weaknesses so well. But when we are attacked more, we are tricked into believing that we are not being effective. That our presence does not matter. That we are weak.

The opposite is true. When we are attacked, the enemy sees us as a threat. We are doing good work.

But when we believe the lies, we are silenced.

One weakness of mine is the fear of driving. I had a bit of anxiety this morning because I needed to drive myself farther than I have in a while. I get after myself for being upset because it’s been a year since my car accident, and I don’t like fear holding me back.

I have incredibly vivid dreams, and sometimes they come true. This is more of a curse than a blessing a lot of the time, because I’ve had a lot of sleeping issues due to these incredibly realistic nightmares. Last night, to add to the anxiety already building, I had a terrible nightmare about getting into a car accident again.

I had these reoccurring nightmares for months, but they hadn’t resurfaced again until recently. I hate feeling weak. I hate feeling out of control. I hate feeling useless and set back.

I had the opportunity to go to an amazing event today. My church, along with several others, held a March for Surrender in honor of Juneteenth and to support our beloved Black brothers and sisters.

God surely wanted to use this event to draw people closer to Him. God wanted everyone there. God wanted me there.

But the enemy pulled out two weaknesses this time.

I’ve had some difficulties in my family lately, and that’s been weighing heavily on my heart. Today all those feelings seemed to explode while I was at the event.

In addition, I struggle with comparison and allowing others to define my worth. The entire point of the event was to support one another and affirm our value and differences. But I felt a lot of strong emotions that greatly hurt me in the past, like loneliness and worthlessness, and suddenly I was overwhelmed.

The speakers proclaimed the truth about how we need to take action. We cannot sit idly by and ignore the injustices in our world. We need to look beyond ourselves and stand up for those who have been forced down.

But the enemy was trying to get me to only focus on myself and my insecurities.

You may have had a day like today recently. You may feel misunderstood.

I have been told so many times by the enemy that I have no future. That I have no purpose. That I am meaningless. That my presence does not matter.

You may be feeling those things right now.

But I’m here to tell you that God has a wonderful future in store for you. God has an incredible purpose that only you can fulfill. You have meaning. You matter. You are needed.

Days like today come and go. Sometimes we just suffer through them silently. Other times we come to God or to other people.

 I could’ve let today be wasted. But I’m not going to let the enemy win. I’m going to use today to draw closer to God. I’m going to use today to empathize with others who are struggling to remember their value. I’m going to use today to empower myself and others to fight for justice. I’m not going to let today be focused on me. I’m not going to let today belittle the very real problems that others are facing that I need to be focused on helping resolve. I’m not going to waste today.

I know I’m not the most popular blogger, writer, photographer, person. Most people don’t even know my name. Hardly anyone knows my story. But if even one life is touched because of what I’ve put out there, then I will be fulfilled.

I pray for everyone who reads my words. Now I’m asking you to also pray for me. Prayer is the most powerful weapon. Pray against all the enemy is trying to do to attack God’s people. More than anything, we need to unify and defend our brothers and sisters in Christ.

We are strong.

Amazing Grace

“People start to heal the moment they feel heard.”

Cheryl Richardson

May, as you probably know, is Mental Health Awareness Month. So, I thought I’d share a little bit of what I’ve gone through and maybe it will encourage you.

I’ve always been a pretty optimistic person, or at least trying to keep a smile on my face. I may not be the loudest or most outgoing person in the world, but I’ve always tried to not bother people with my problems. I’ve never been super popular, but I had a pretty wide range of friends growing up.

Last year, though, a lot of my world fell apart. And I’ll admit that I didn’t handle it in the healthiest way. I turned inward instead of reaching out because I didn’t want to be seen as someone different. Everyone expected me to be the person who was cheering them up, not being cheered up. And as many of you probably know, when you are feeling low, you don’t always want to have someone trying to make you laugh. You just want someone to listen to you.

Over time, I forgot what I was feeling and thinking about myself last year, because this year I’ve been able to put myself together with the help of God and loving people. But since I’ve had more time lately, I’ve gone through some old journals from last year, and it made me begin to think.

I used to think that I was actually helping myself by pointing out every little flaw and imperfection, using names towards myself that I would never call anyone else. I saw myself as inferior and not worthy of what every human is worthy of. We all have value. You have value. I have value. But we can’t always remember that.

It hurts us when we treat ourselves any different than how we would treat a friend. It hurts us when we pretend like God’s words for us, such as being His beloved child, worthy of salvation, are not applicable to us. We are one of the ones He is referring to. We are worthy of love and grace.

I just want you to know a few things because I wish someone had told me this last year. You are not a burden to the ones who truly love you. You have so much in store. You are beautiful and you don’t have to change to become worthy of these true statements. You are God’s beloved child and nothing can change that. Not even if you have lists of regrets, past mistakes, or perhaps did the one thing you thought no one could forgive. God’s just pretty cool like that; He’s going to forgive you. And chances are, other people who value you will see you in a way you can’t even imagine. Don’t give up.

We all have highs and lows when it comes to how we view ourselves and the world. I know that so many of you out there are either suffering in silence or you are getting help, but every day is still a struggle.

For those of you out there who don’t deal with this every day, please just extend abounding grace to those out there. Everyone is going through something hard, even if we can’t see it. I can slip into forgetting how my words and actions may affect others, and when we aren’t in a super difficult season ourselves, it can be easy to forget what it’s like. But just try to remember what you would’ve told yourself during your rougher days and if someone else needs to hear it, share it.

Tips for Giving Yourself Grace

I just wanted to share a few reminders with you when you are feeling upset with yourself:

~ The present isn’t forever. One mistake isn’t going to ruin who you are in God’s eyes.

~ You are your harshest critic. Chances are, others were not noticing that little slip up that you’ve been replaying in your mind.

~ You may not be able to take it back, but that doesn’t mean the journey is over. This is only the beginning. You don’t have to let this stop you from making up for it or moving on.

~You can do this ❤

Ways of Connecting with God and Resetting

Oftentimes the best way to feel better is to be able to rest in God’s presence and process our emotions. Here are a few ways you can give back to yourself:

~Journal daily

~Read encouraging devotionals

~Keep up a short, daily Bible study (I highly recommend checking out the Bible app for some free daily studies!)

~Reach out to a couple close people in your life that fill you with hope and love

~Draw or paint (You don’t have to be “good” at it! You can just see what happens and enjoy the process!)

~Listen to calm music or your favorite tunes, as long as they are uplifting

~Look up a favorite speaker or singer and hearing their encouraging words

Final Thoughts

I hope this has encouraged you! Please, no matter what, just remember that you are never alone. God is always with you, you can always reach out, and people love you.

Also, the best way for me to remember that this isn’t the permanent situation is to look past myself. See others’ needs and help them. Reach out and be the friend that I love and need.

We don’t have to let one another suffer in silence. We can be united. We can be there for one another.

I’m praying for you guys, and I hope you all are able to have a restful weekend 🙂

“For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”

-Jeremiah 29:11

True Joy = Releasing Control

Returning to Our Regularly Scheduled Program…

So…remember how I said I would be talking about joy as my first “series”? Remember how that was like…five months ago or something? Well, as you can see, I often go off topic and somehow wander back, ha-ha. Anyway, I have been thinking about joy again, so I wanted to pop into this series again, although I’m not sure if my next post will be related to joy, we’ll see.

Inherited Control-Freakness

I come from a long line of control freaks. I’m not being judgmental when I say this, they are self-proclaimed. I, myself, am also a bit of a control freak. I might not seem like it on the surface level, because I tend to go along with what other people want and I try to be flexible because I care deeply about pleasing others. However, I am actually quite stubborn, and I inwardly panic whenever things don’t go the way I plan.

I am more like this when I am placed in leadership positions or just when planning my own life, but my family often tries to control one another. A certain member of my family sets out what the other person must eat for lunch each day, and gets irritated if that person does not eat it. Money, food, how a room is decorated…those are just a few things that I often have to argue about with my family because I get frustrated with them trying to control me.

Am I saying that planning is a bad thing? NO!!!! I am definitely not, because you should be prepared and it’s silly to go into situations and build more stress for yourself if you don’t prepare. However, I am saying that at some point, the only way to have full faith in God and in His plan for your life is going along with “God’s flow”.

Going with the Flow

So I have this friend, and we occasionally talk about the future. Every time, he repeatedly states how he just “goes with the flow” and acts like he has no control over his life. Later on, I talked to another guy and he basically said the same thing. I feel like the world is often split into two groups: The Planners and the Floaters. Neither are wrong, yet neither are right.

Going with the flow may appear to relieve more stress and show more faith in God. But God will only work with you if you’re willing to actually, you know, do your part? Frankly, I feel like going with the flow in ALL areas of your life might actually add more stress because you often step into situations and are faced with a bunch of decisions that have to be made on the spot. I am horrible at that, so I could never float through life that way. However, there are definitely decisive people out there, so if that works for you, I’m glad.

The combination of going with the flow and always being prepared is going with God’s flow. I know that sounds a little silly, but that’s the only name I can think of that accurately depicts what I’m speaking of.

Going with God’s flow means that you are trusting God and not freaking out when things don’t go the way you anticipated. However, it also means that you are willing to work hard and still prepare for the future, not just expecting things to somehow work out.

How Does this Relate to Joy?

Have you ever stressed over something, an event perhaps, that you were in charge of. You were so panicked that by the end of it, you wanted to just go away and never be in charge again? While others enjoyed themselves, you spent the night stressing over everything and worrying that things weren’t going to work out. In that situation, you are missing out on having a good time, or experiencing joy.

In another situation, you may have planned every last detail down to the tablecloth design and then everything still ends up going poorly. Believe me, this has happened to me on numerous occasions and I can feel your pain! But because you were so disappointed and discouraged, you never took the time to learn from the experience. And in a way, this also causes you to lose joy because you may end up making the same mistakes in the future.

I don’t believe that joy and fear can coexist, as I stated in a previous post, and trying to control everything is a way of demonstrating fear. It’s basically telling God to His face that you don’t trust Him and you think you know more than Him.

Ouch, that wasn’t what I was thinking when I freaked out over not being able to decide the location for my last meeting, was I?

It’s easy to not realize what our little habits are doing to destroy our lives and our relationship with God. But the more ingrained these thought patterns become, thinking “oh, if only things had gone the way I had planned” or getting angry with people, the more we lose track of who we are supposed to be: joyful humans who are sharing the love of God. It’s easy to let negative thoughts fill our heads. We think that criticizing ourselves for something we can’t control is okay, and it’s not. That is ultimately shaping our actions and our opinions of ourselves.

So today, try to let loose a little bit and see what happens. Trust God and believe that even if things don’t go exactly the way you want, maybe something better was actually waiting for you. It hopefully will also help your relationships too.

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”

~Matthew 6:25

Fear Interrupts Joy

“Worry about tomorrow steals the joy of today.”

Barbara Cameron

New Year, New Post

First of all, welcome back! I hope you all had a fabulous new year’s and a fresh start to 2020.

Second, you’re probably wondering why I decided to include a dog as the “symbol” of this post. My topic is on fear. Trust me, I am not afraid of dogs.

I’m going to return to my earlier series on joy, which I had started but typical Nine style, I got distracted and life got ahead of me, and so I only ended up doing one post. But I’m going to try to be less distracted and NOTICE more about my habits and my surroundings this year (notice is our word of the year at my church for 2020 and I may do a post about that later)…but that’s distracting from the point again!

A Quick Tail 😉

Anyway, I’ll start out with a little story about my dog, Hobi. I wanted to include an image of him, but the computer wouldn’t let me 😦 (he does look a lot like the dog in the picture though!)

He has a heart condition, which causes him to cough quite frequently, often when he is overexerting himself. But lately, I’ve started noticing a pattern. He will be in the middle of having the time of his life, running around with his incredibly slobbery reindeer toy that has its limbs chewed off, and all of a sudden, in the midst of his joyous time, he stops and coughs. He leaves his fun, his toy, and goes away to be by himself to finish coughing.

Now, besides the fact that this makes me quite sad, I was starting to make parallels between this action and how we often allow fear to interrupt our joy. Let me explain further before you leave, thinking that I have just compared you to my scruffy dog.

What’s this got to do with me?

Sometimes, when we get an opportunity, we will run out there head-on and feel free, excited, and full of joy. But then…something stops us. Doubt, other people’s opinions, a sudden realization, an obstacle of some sort. Fear overcomes us and we lose that joy, that passion we had for something important to us. And we can’t let this continue to happen.

As I’m sure you are all aware, there are extremely high levels of depression, hopelessness, and anxiety in the world today. Many blame it on our society of comparison, social media, entertainment, more people = less chances for everyone, etc. While those may be valid reasons, I think a main one is fear. There is so much fear now that we have access to so many resources, the news just a tap away. While it’s good to stay informed, it’s also important to remember that we can’t let fear hold us back from what we are passionate about. When we lose that sense of motivation, we lose a part of ourselves.

Now, you might be tired of me talking about fear, because I do so frequently. But that’s because it’s a large part of my life, and I bet it is or has been of yours too. Now, the average person, especially someone at my church, might see me as a calm, undisturbed, reserved person. (Believe me, I’m not on the inside! I’ve just heard observations…) Well, the truth is, I have a lot of fear about things going wrong, what people think of me, and how the future will play out. I work very hard to mute my fearful side, and often the most that comes out is me sounding a little cautious about certain ideas, or I confirm things repeatedly to make sure that everything is all figured out.

While being prepared is good, allowing fear to hold us back is bad. Now, one might say that worry does not harm us, especially if we don’t release those to the world. I’d beg to differ. Fear deprives us of joy, because instead of enjoying the here and now, we are so focused on what’s might go wrong, that we forget to realize everything that’s gone right.

I’m not saying that we can’t appreciate what’s happened in the past, and we should allow there to be some space for negative emotions to be exposed so that we can process them and move forward. But I’m saying that you can stop worrying about what’s going to happen next. We can continue to pursue that opportunity (if God wills it of course) and maneuver through the rough times in order to come out of the experience a better person. Those things that we fear might actually be what we are thanking God for later in our lives.

My Challenge to You

Tomorrow, the next day, the next week, the next month…(you get the idea), I want you to take the time to write down what you are afraid of. That’s right, I want you to recognize them. I want you to look at them and see if those are practical things for you to be concerned about. And then, I want you to write one thing that has gone well for you for each of the things that you’re afraid of. It might not flow as easily at first, but eventually you will be able to see how God is working through all those things, and that there are still things to have joy about.

In the long term, the next time you hear something that should be a source of joy, I want you to celebrate. It can be anything, something big or something small. Celebrate those victories and forget about the fear for a little while. Trust me, you will feel better about yourself and the situation afterwards.

My call of action to you: live with hope for the future, not fear!

“When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought joy to my soul.”

~Psalm 94:19

True Joy = Gratitude

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

Albert Einstein

Welcome Back!

First of all, I’d like to apologize. (I know it’s a Nine thing to apologize too much, but this time it’s for good reason!) I really planned on keeping this blog up, and I have not been doing an adequate job of that, considering it’s been almost a month since the last time I posted. Honestly, I won’t get too into it, but life has been extremely crazy. However, that has meant that I have thought of some new things to talk about, including a new series!

Speaking of that New Series…

My new series is going to be all about joy. Joy is an important thing to me, and as a Nine, I do try to keep things positive, however I struggle with thinking the best thoughts sometimes. It can be easy to slide into a negative cycle, and hopefully we can grow together through this!

Today’s Takeaway:

The number one way to have joy is to be grateful. That means saying thank you to the guy that picks up your trash, the person that holds the door open for you, the people in your life that have always been there for you. Any time there is an opportunity to say thank you, do it. Sometimes, I feel like expressing too much gratitude (if that’s such a thing!) would be the wrong thing to do. Like, I’ll randomly feel thankful for certain people in my life, but I won’t do anything about it because I feel like they will think it’s weird of me. But then I realize how a random “thank you for being there” or just extra appreciation would make my day. And I’m sure many of you might agree to that feeling too. Suddenly, all you’ve been doing for others has paid off just by a few words.

If you notice what you have, you will have an immediate “spirit lift”. Trust me on that one! It will let you realize how many prayers have been answered that you haven’t thanked God for recently, how many people may need your help who you were overlooking, or just how amazing it can be to be alive. I’m saying all this during one of the hardest seasons of my life and during a season that I know has been insanely difficult for many loved ones. Why am I going on and on about how amazing life is right now? So that I can keep going with hope and joy into the future. And I hope that you can too.

Practical Tips for Becoming More Grateful

  • Thank random people (like strangers or people you don’t know very well) who do things for you. They are often under-appreciated.
  • Thank people who are close to you just because. They will greatly appreciate it.
  • Keep a journal full of answered prayers, and if you keep a regular journal, write three things that you are grateful for each day.
  • Take a moment to breathe each day and reflect.
  • Realize all that is happening in the world right now, and how you have an important role to play!
  • Read some inspiring verses or stories.

“Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”

~1 Thessalonians 5:18