Breaking Point

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This week in Melissa Taylor’s Online Bible Studies we studied chapter 10: “Broken for Breakthrough,” in the book “Stressed-Less Living by Tracie Miles.  As one of our blog hop topics, we were asked to write about a breaking point in our life.  For mine, I’m going to share with you all a previous post of mine that I had written last August, just a few months before discovering Proverbs 31 and the online Bible studies.  I think that through it you will see that it was no coincidence that I “stumbled across” these studies just as they were getting ready to begin the “Let. It. Go.” book.  At that time, I was definitely at a breaking point in my life – struggling with physical health problems, fear, lingering post-partum depression, stress-eating, relational and family stress, and on top of all of that, I had fallen away from my close, daily relationship with our Lord.  It was also only a couple months after my Mom had open-heart surgery to repair a birth defect that had gone undiagnosed and as a result had almost killed her…just one month after I originally wrote this post, she died…God turned me back to him knowing how much I was going to need him just a few short weeks later.  God is good. 

 

(from August ’12)

I spent much of my life struggling to hide and stuff down the pain that I felt, so that on the outside, I'd look strong and unbreakable; but it was all a front. Truth was, inside, my pain and sorrow continually cut like a knife, destroying me slowly one tiny piece at a time. I did not always know the Lord, nor have I always understood that my daily struggles in the world could be healed through His Word. While sometimes I find myself briefly falling back into my old habits, the Lord is always there to pick me up and remind me of His truths...

Mirror, Mirror

As I’ve sat here on my bed brainstorming ideas for this week’s blog topics, I keep finding myself pausing and staring off in thought, only to then find myself fixating on the full length, double- mirrored closet doors across the room in front of me with the reflection of myself staring right back at me as if obviously, but silently saying, “You already know what you need to write about!”  And of course my reflection's right - I do.  The topic becomes more and more obvious to my mind every time the reflection in those darn mirrors becomes clearer and clearer to my eyes.  The unfortunate thing here is that, what’s also become clearer and clearer, is an anxiousness that is rising in my chest and threatening to overwhelm me with the possibility of sharing this topic so publicly. 

With this anxiousness, the question then arises, should I address a topic for the “Stressed-Less Living” study/book, when doing so causes me to stress?  Again, unfortunately for me, the un-refutable answer to that question is yes because before I started writing I’d prayed for God to lead my pen and not let it go astray, and as many times as I’ve attempted to write on other topics, my mind and gaze keep finding their way back to that mirror and my pen back to that topic…that topic who’s truth looms before me in those mirrors...that topic which is blaringly obvious in the reflection that lies there…that topic in which I’ve continually denied, but can no longer hide…the truth that I’ve had a difficult time admitting openly, though I’ve already admitted it to myself long ago…alright, out with it already! – I am a stress-eater and as a result I’m over weight.  There.  I said it.

It hasn’t always been this way – me eating in response to the stress in my life.  In fact, it used to be the opposite.  In my college years there was a point that I'd became as thin as a rail as a result of not wanting to eat when stressed, but that’s all definitely changed now.  The question is why?  What changed, and when?  Well, as Tracie says on page 49 of “Stressed-Less Living,” “In order to embark on the journey of turning our stressors over to God and letting him replace them with peace, we must first figure out exactly what those stressors really are.”  Which is exactly what reading this book and participating in this study is doing for me and, as it turns out, it's leading to having to take a hard look into a mirror from my past – one from four years and nine months ago to be exact – the time in which I became pregnant with my daughter.

During that time, there just so happened to be many stressors in my life.  Just a few months before, we had made the major decision to pack everything up and leave sunny San Diego to return to our home area in North Idaho.  This was something we’d felt led by God to do, but it also meant a lot of emotional stress by forcing me to come face to face with the past I’d been running from for so long.  In moving, we also found ourselves faced with an uncertain financial picture, as my husband went from being a regularly paid employee to self-employed in what turned out to be a fast dying market.  It also left us with no health insurance (not at all stressful when pregnant with your first baby), and required my husband to have to travel out of state (which meant being gone for weeks at a time) to get enough work to stay afloat. 

Then there was an old neck injury I had acquired years before in a car accident, which conveniently and suddenly flared up just weeks before becoming pregnant, and with it came the unwanted and equally inconvenient advice of my chiropractor to cease all exercise until he could get things back in check – problem being, pregnancy doesn’t really lend itself to fixing spinal injuries.  It’s actually pretty good at the opposite!  And here I am still, almost five years later, and I have yet to be freed from that flare up and have since been told that a lot of the exercise restriction will remain for life (the injuries from giving birth are a contributing factor).

In addition to all of that, I felt really lonely.  Not only was I left alone due to my husband working out of state most of the time, but our move across states had left us with little to no support system.  We hadn’t fully plugged into a new church or made any new and ever-so-important Godly relationships yet.  And then when you add in all those pregnancy hormones on top of it all, I was left with one big recipe for stress-eating!

All-in-all, there was certainly cause for me to become stressed, but what I’m learning from the “Stressed-Less Living” study/book is: “it is not the stressful situations in and of themselves that cause our stress but the way we process and handle those stressful situations.” (pg. 37), and I definitely didn’t handle them positively.  The way I processed it was by trying to ignore it all together and by trying to mask it by seeking out my needed security and comfort through food...I processed my stress with processed foods!  Does anyone else find this ironically funny?!

Stressed-Less

When the online Bible study (OBS) for the book “Let. It. Go.” was coming to a close I thought I’d have no doubts as to whether or not I wanted to continue being a part of this online community of woman by signing up for future studies – I thoroughly enjoyed it, learned so much, felt so blessed to be a part of it, and loved the ability and flexibility of doing a study online at home, so signing up for the next one sure seemed like a no-brainer to me.  However, when the time came to actually sign-up, I had hesitation.  Truth be told, I’ve tended to be a “100% or nothing” kind of person and I often set high expectations for myself in everything I do.  Recognizing that I was heading into a very busy couple of months in which I already had an overwhelming amount of commitments, I had reservations that I could maintain my usual standard of 100%, and therefore felt I could be setting myself up for failure – something of which I’ve had a pattern of shying away from all too often…and yet I’m here – writing my first blog for the OBS of the book “Stressed-less living” by Tracie Miles. 

What some of you are probably wondering at this point is why – why did I choose to do this study?  Well, I wish I could say that it was because I’d recognized my unreasonable expectations of myself or that I wanted to break my fear of failure cycle, or even at the very least that I’d realized how utterly ridiculous it was to not do a study on stress due to having too much stress lying ahead already, because really, how funny is that?! Yes, those would all have been fantastic reasons to write about.  But no, another truth be told, I was looking at the study as a “keep me plugged in, get me to the next study” kind of deal.  It’s O.K. to wince at that statement, I just did.  But with as bad as that reason sounds, and maybe even is, I’m so thankful and humbled that it at least got me involved so that I could discover that, while that may have been my initial reason and plan, it was definitely not God’s!

When I picked up the book and began to read the foreword and then the introduction, my suspicions quickly grew that there was going to be more to this study than I had anticipated, for I might as well have underlined the entire sections!  I was really not prepared for the emotional impact that what I was reading seemed to have on me.  As I’ve shared with some fellow OBSers already, I somehow hadn’t equated all of the feelings and reactions I’d been having for the last five years of my life to stress, so wow, was chapter one ever an eye-opener for me!

I couldn’t deny the fact that Tracie’s words, “it seemed life had become a job instead of a joy,” (pg. 18), described exactly how I felt and that her questions were the very questions I’d been asking myself: “Where was the happiness I once knew?  Why did I constantly focus on what was wrong with my life rather than celebrating what was good?  Why did I allow the actions and behaviors of other people make me feel so afflicted, angry, incompetent, or hurt?  When did I become so negative and melancholy? Why had I become such a pessimist lately?  When and how had I morphed into such a frazzled woman?  Could I ever feel like myself again?” (pg. 18).  Then other words like: “missing the opportunity to enjoy my life,” and “forgotten what it felt like for my heart to feel light and free,” (pg. 19) jumped off the page at me.  And when I got to this quote: “Sometimes God allows us to get to the very end of our rope, barely hanging on by one little thread, before he reaches down and pulls us up with one mighty swoop.” (pg.19), and I couldn’t hold back the tears, I knew without a doubt that yes indeed, stress is a problem in my life and that there was definitely no mistake in me taking part in this “Stressed-Less Living” OBS – praise God! 

So, now that all that has been made clear for me, I have new and greatly improved goals for this study - to do as Tracie suggests - to start anew, humble myself before the Lord and admit I’m sick with stress.  To discover what the real root causes are for my stress – soul search (pg. 24). To “focus on making his peace the pattern of my life instead of living in a pattern of constantly falling in and out of the stress pit every time I experience life’s ups and downs.”  To have “true faith and trust in my Savior become a reality in my heart,” and “living less stressed become a reality in my life.” To have “resumed authority over my emotions,” and ultimately to stop self-inducing stress (pg. 31).  Those and more are all the things I hope to do, learn, and grow through this “Stressed-Less Living” experience, and reading Tracie’s relatable story gives me added hope that it can be done – I can, with Christ, turn my story around and get back on track living out God’s will for my life.  What a relief and a thrill!

“Don’t be afraid, for I am with you.  Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God.  I will strengthen you and help you.  I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.” ~Isaiah 41:10 NLT

“…our flesh wants to blame – blame – blame, our minds want to worry – worry – worry, and our hearts want to hurt – hurt – hurt.  But if we are holding onto that hurt, worry, and blame with both hands clenched, then we won’t have any hands left to grab on to the peace that God places within our reach.” (pg. 32)

“Despite what our society wants us to believe, and regardless of the troubles of this world, God’s normal is always serenity, and his normal can be our normal, too.” (pg. 33)

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