Lies Anxiety Tells Us.

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Anxiety is ruthless.

And while this post last week was an encouragement to respect our fears and listen to where they come from, we do not have to listen to the lies they spin.

Anxiety is a nightmare.

Someone once told me that if I truly believe that God is bigger than anything and everything, then I wouldn’t have such crippling anxiety.

She obviously doesn’t struggle with anxiety.

It’s a war zone. a series of battles inside of myself that are sometimes won and sometimes lost.

Some days I wake up and I am ready to take on the world, and other days going outside seems like an outrageous task.

Anxiety spins lies in our brain like “You are not good enough”, “you can’t do this”, “you are a mess”.

It takes a seemingly simple work party, or a trip to the park, or a grocery store run feel like climbing Everest in bare feet and a bathing suit.

It steals precious moments from our lives without us even knowing it.

Most nights when I come home, I sit on the couch and take a deep breath and realize my shoulders have been clenched up to my ears all day.

Anxiety. The silent dictator.

A wise person once told me to let fear ride in the passenger seat, but not to let it drive.

I love this imagery.

I imagine this faceless person next to me in a cute convertible, they reach to change the station and I say, “no way. you can ride along, but I’m in charge of the details”.

I know It may sound incredibly weird to actually give your anxiety permission to be a part of things, but really all anxiety is, is a part of ourselves that wants to be heard. That doesn’t mean that we have to live our whole lives enslaved by it and it is a frustratingly ongoing process. But by letting our anxiety sit in the passenger seat, we can keep an eye on it and allow it to feel heard, while still driving the car.

I know sometimes the burden of anxiety seems too great, and it feels like there’s nothing you can do to get off of the hamster wheel. Sometimes the last thing we feel we can do is muster up a corny pep talk.

So when that is the case, and you’re missing one more social event because you’re in panic mode, tell yourself that you’re doing the best that you can, snuggle up on the coach or draw yourself a nice bath, and give yourself a break.

Anxiety sucks you guys, and the least we can do is be on our own side.

 

I Don’t Want To Be A Christian Anymore.

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I don’t want to be a Christian anymore.

I am so tired.

Lately I see too many things being done in the name of God that I can’t make sense of.

It’s hard for me to see Jesus when we’re turning away refugees in fear, or shaming our brothers and sisters for their sexual orientation.

I don’t blame anyone for hating Christians right now.

I wouldn’t like us very much either.

How often do selfishness, pride, and anger drive decisions and words?

Lord have mercy.

Can we blame those who don’t trust Christians? Those who don’t want to step foot in a church?

I don’t want to be a Christian anymore.

I don’t want to belong to this agenda, this hate, this Christian chaos around me.

I want to be a part of a different Christianity. One that seeks out love above all else. One that welcomes the homeless, feeds the poor, loves the broken. I know many that live this way. And I am thankful that there are still those living with their arms reaching to Jesus, running after Him with all that they are. Those that desire to be more like Him.

But right now, the spotlight is on a different kind of Christianity. The kind I want no part of. The kind where people speak just to hear their own voices and quote the words of Jesus to meet their own agenda.

It is sickening. And my heart is saddened that the world is seeing that and not the love of Jesus.

Is that not what we are called to do in this world? To be the love of Jesus? That is all that is asked of us. Not to condemn others, or shame them, or drag them into a relationship with Christ. But to love like Jesus.

He is in control of all else.

 

What My Instagram Doesn’t Tell You.

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So once upon a time (or in 1837) to be exact, this guy named Louis Daguerre invented the first semi-practical camera. And that was the beginning of it all.

At first, photographs were so difficult to take that only royalty could afford such a luxury. These photographs were used solely for historical purposes. No one had millions of photographs all over their houses. But then of course it began to evolve. As the photography process got simpler, more and more people were able to benefit from it.

And now here were are, able to take photographs from many different devices. We can print them, post them, and send them from our email through the abyss to someone else’s email. It’s unbelievable isn’t it?

I love pictures. I’m not always so good at remembering to take them, but I love looking back on the most perfect moments of my life and remembering. That’s usually what we take pictures of, isn’t it? The perfect moments, the smiling moments, the moments we never want to forget.

Thanks to modern technology, many of our relationships are based on pictures. How many friends from high school and college do you rarely talk to, but follow on social media through their pictures? For me, it’s a whole lot. It’s pretty incredible actually.

But I think that we forget sometimes that they’re just pictures.

We forget that nobody is posting on Instagram the angle that highlights that zit on their chin, or the pictures of their children throwing a tantrum at the grocery store. We just don’t. We like to capture the moments we want to remember.

My Instagram is a sea of pictures of Max (my apologies to all who follow me), with the occasional photo of Eric and I, usually looking our best and properly edited. Nothing wrong with that, right? But there’s a lot of other stuff to our life too.

I’m not taking pictures of the hard days, the ones that make me want to crawl back into bed. I’m not grabbing a selfie while Eric and I are deep in a heated argument. I’m not posting pictures of myself mid panic attack.

Pictures are not a full representation of anyones life. They just aren’t.

And I think that we forget that.

We look at other people’s lives through pictures and it feels like our lives suck. Like we’ve missed the perfect train that everyone else is riding.

Sometimes we just need to take a breath and remember that real lives are happening behind those pictures of real people, flawed as us.

Though pictures may not always show it, life is pretty messy for all of us.

So the next time you see a picture of someone else’s life that makes you feel inferior, remember, that it is just a picture, and they are just a person.

 

 

Don’t Ask Me What I Do For A Living.

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It is without a doubt my least favorite question. But I ask other people just as much as they ask me. It’s an ice breaker, a way to get to know  someone in one simple question.

But here’s why I dislike it so much.

It ultimately tells us very little about the other person.

What someone does from 9-5 is only a small part of who they are.

If all someone ever asked me was what I do for a living, they would get an answer disconnected from who I am. But if someone asked me what I love or what I am passionate about, they would know that I am a writer, a creator, passionate about vulnerability and loving the broken.

In fact most of my favorite people have boring jobs that they don’t love and that have nothing to do with what they are passionate about. That’s just how they pay the bills. What happens when they are not at work is what makes them so fascinating.

When I am out and about, I often wonder about the the people that I meet. The cash register at the grocery store, the bus driver I pass every morning, the barista making my coffee. What do the rest of their lives look like? Are they a single parent raising three young ones on their own? A cancer survivor? A future doctor putting themselves through medical school?

What they currently do for a living would tell me so little about them.

From now on, when I meet someone, I am going to ask them what they’re passionate about. Because there is so much more to people than what they do for a living.

 

 

 

We’re Too Hard On Ourselves.

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I am not even sure we notice anymore. The slight jabs, the hurtful words, the manipulation, the bullying. If it were someone else doing it to us we would notice. We would see red flags and call for help, but when it comes to how we treat ourselves, we don’t give it a second thought.

We’re too hard on ourselves.

When we do something “right” it’s not enough, and when we do something “wrong” it’s world war 3 inside our own head.

Many of us wouldn’t dare to treat someone else the way we treat ourselves, especially a child.

A therapist at my boarding school used to tell me to stop myself when I knew I was beating myself up and imagine saying those things to little me. The me with crazy blonde hair, pink cheeks, a grin from ear to ear. I can’t yell at her, she’s too adorable. But the problem is that usually I’m not even aware that I’m being unkind to myself, it’s second nature. And so before I even have time to imagine cute little me, I’ve already done too much damage.

Kindness to self is so important.

If we cannot love and respect and give grace to ourselves we will not be able to fully give that to anyone else. That is truth beyond a shadow of a doubt.

We often miss that detail. We get that loving God is important, and we get that loving others is important, but loving ourselves gets thrown to the wayside. And I don’t mean loving ourselves in the self-absorbed sense, we’re pretty good at that. I mean truly loving ourselves, respecting our fears, listening to our needs, and giving ourselves a break.

Can you give yourself a break today?

When the dishes don’t get done can you say to yourself, “That’s okay, I’ll get them tomorrow.” Or when you yell at your husband for no good reason can you apologize to him and then say to yourself, “It’s okay. you’re human. You’re doing your best here”.

Because isn’t that the real truth?

We’re all just doing our best.

That’s been my new self talk: “Lizz, you’re doing the best you can.”

I’ve even started speaking it over other people. Some people I know and some I do not. When I find myself judging someone in the grocery store, I tell myself that they’re doing the best that they can too. It changes the way that I see a total stranger, like we’re allies in this messy world.

We’re all doing the best that we can in any given moment. Even in our worst moments, we’re just trying to survive, to get by, to stay sane.

If you remember nothing else I’ve written here today, remember this: Be kind to yourself. Be gentle with your heart. Give yourself grace in every moment, in every decision. When you make what feels like a mistake, honor the part of yourself that felt like that was the right thing to do. There are a million things in this world that will beat us up, so don’t do that from that inside.

We’re doing the best we can, and that is enough.

 

It’s Okay To Be Afraid.

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I took Max to the vet yesterday. Poor guy was TERRIFIED. His whole body was literally shaking the entire time.

For those of you who don’t know Max, he’s the Thor of dogs; tough, muscular, incredibly handsome. He has it all. Usually he is the one protecting me. Yet there we were, sitting in the vet’s office and he is climbing up onto the chair and trying to get into my lap.

It was obvious that he was afraid. And so I kept talking to him in this obnoxious baby voice that he loves so much and I kept telling him “it’s okay buddy. you’re okay buddy”. But then I stopped and thought about it for a second. Every 6 months, we bring Max to this place and they give him a million shots, take a poop sample or two, and poke him all over. No wonder he is shaking like a leaf. He knows what’s going on. So then I took a different route with my obnoxious baby voice and said, “okay Max, this totally sucks, but it’s only for a little and then we’ll go home and we can snuggle on the couch, ok”

Not that I believe that my dog understands what I am saying at all. But it made a difference for me. Because I realized that I don’t much care for the way that I approach fear in general. My initial reaction is to tell myself or others that it’s going to be okay, but the reality is that usually we are afraid for a reason.

And it’s okay to be afraid.

Being the self proclaimed queen of anxiety, I basically have a PH.D in irrational fears. Put me in a crate with thousands of tiny spiders and I’ll be fine, but bring me to any public place and I’ll likely have a panic attack in the first five minutes we’re there.

But regardless of whether someone tells us our fears are rational or irrational, there is still a reason for them, and we owe it to ourselves to respect our fear.

Yes, sometimes fear gets out of control and we need therapy, or a hot bath, or some good strong meds (or a combination of all three). But all the while it is important to respect our fear, to listen to what it is trying to tell us, to thank it for warning us of something no matter how small that something may seem.

So whatever it is that you’re afraid of today, be kind to yourself. Because at the end of the day, life can be really scary sometimes, and other people can be scary, and our own minds can be scary. Acknowledge that. Give yourself a break. Rest in the truth that we don’t walk through fear alone, and give yourself a great big emotional hug. You’d be surprised how much listening to your fear and respecting its purpose changes the way you see yourself and the world around you.

Honoring The Weariness.

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For all of us feeling weary today.

So many things on the calendar. So many burdens on our hearts.

Our culture tells us to get over it. Drink some coffee or a red bull. Fight the weariness. Weariness is weakness, don’t let it win.

My fellow wanderers; That is NOT TRUTH.

We are free to rest.

We are free to say “no” to another potluck.

We are free to ignore emails for the weekend.

We are free to and ask ourselves what we really need.

Honor the weariness.

And if there are commitments that we feel we cannot break, or meetings we cannot miss, we will still honor the weariness.

We will drink a lot of coffee if we need to, and chew tons of gum to keep us awake, but we will honor the weariness and the reason it is there.

Because weariness is just a part of ourselves saying “I cannot anymore, I am running on empty”.

So we will gently encourage ourselves through the weariness until we can rest away from it all, even for a moment.

 

“Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest” {Matthew 11:28}

What David Is Teaching Me About The Mundane.

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I took Max for a walk today to break up the monotony of writing (or more accurately, binge watching Dawson’s Creek). And as he dragged me five blocks I did some major thinking. Not just regular walk thinking, but the real questioning life stuff.

When I look around me, I don’t necessarily see an obvious purpose for my life. I am a 25 year aspiring writer making a living off of watching other people’s kids. The day to day often feels monotonous and uninspired. And while I love my life in so many ways, I can’t help but feel like I am missing something that everyone else is getting.

And so I look to my good friend David, as I always do when I am drowning in the mundane.

Yes, David the shepherd boy who no one noticed for years and years. The one who spent all of his time with the sheep, walking up and down hills, and playing his harp for an audience that couldn’t applaud. And yes he eventually became a king, a ruler over many, but what Is most interesting to me is how all the mundane stuff shaped his character.

Years and years at the bottom of the rung, spending all his time with animals, looked down upon by even his own family. I’m sure he felt discouraged on many occasions. His life may have even felt purposeless at times.

But if he hadn’t experienced the mundane would he have made a good king? If he had never learned to defend his helpless little lambs, and walk through the mountains would he have made it to the palace in the first place?

This boy spent years alone with God; listening and resting in his presence. Even though his life wasn’t getting anymore exciting there for a while.

And so as I walk the mundane, a time in my life with many directions yet no direction at all, I remember the shepherd boy. A boy whose mundane was actually the important stuff, the stuff shaping him into the man he was meant to be.

So if your walking in the mundane today, unsure of where you’re going or how to get there, take heart in the truth that these moments matter. We grow the most in the little moments, not the big ones.

 

 

 

 

 

Why Struggling With Our Faith Is A Good Thing.

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I’ve struggled with my faith since the day my Sunday school teacher told me that God is three in one (um…what?). That was the beginning of a never ending confusion about what exactly I believe.

It has caused me the greatest turmoil, and the deepest peace.

The enigma that is God is terrifying. We like to control things, know things, understand things, but this is one thing that we will never be able to grasp. We hate that. Some of us cannot live with that. So we line up all of our ducks in a row, dot all of our “i’s”, and still have no control.

I have spent most of my young life assuming that there are answers out there to my God questions and I am just missing them.

What if there are no answers?

What if there are no formulas?

What if faith is always a struggle?

And most importantly: What if that’s ok?

What we like to call “struggling with our faith” is a part of faith. It’s not this separate thing that we need to get past in order to have real faith. It is faith. it’s the most beautiful part of our faith.

Who needs to have a relationship with a God that makes total sense?

All of our questions and our unknowns only pull us closer to our creator.

Even questioning the very existence of God.

Yup, I totally just said that, so sue me.

God wants a real relationship with us. Like a really real one. None of this fake stuff that we do so much with each other.

Even the hardest stuff.

A friend of mine told me the other day, “I want to believe in God, but I just have so many questions”. And so I told her, “there doesn’t need to be a ‘but’ in that sentence. Believing is having questions”.

Our questions won’t scare God, they won’t offend God, they won’t even make God hate us.

They may actually be the thing driving us straight into His arms.

Struggle with your faith friends. Ask all of the deepest, darkest questions. That’s the real faith.

 

 

 

How Living Life Intentionally Is Unintentionally Driving Us Crazy.

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I hear a lot of stuff about living intentionally. The idea is a beautiful one, revolving around living on purpose and not wasting moments.

However, because of the fact that we are humans, living intentionally is often distorted into the idea of living in constant fear that you are missing out on something or not pouring enough of yourself into something. This is also known by some as FOMO or the Fear Of Missing Out (read what Brené Brown has to say on this here).

What we often fail to remember is that living intentionally and with purpose is not about micromanaging and perfection, it’s about peace and surrender.

Living life intentionally is not about constantly looking over your shoulder just to check if you accidentally aren’t being intentional, it’s about looking at what is right next to you in each moment and doing the best you can right then and there.

It’s about peace, not insanity.

And yet we drive ourselves crazy trying to do it all. Trying to living every moment with as much intention as the last, making every moment count.

I can’t help but wonder; what if every moment counts just because?

What if living intentionally is more about noticing and reacting, then actively planning anything?

Maybe we’re all just trying too hard.

Ever feel like you’re constantly balancing a million porcelain plates on top of your head with a pencil?

Yeah me too. That’s NOT how it needs to be.

Living intentionally is about resting in each moment (yes resting), observing what is happening around us, and reacting to those things that catch our attention.

Believe me guys, God is big enough to draw our hearts towards the things he wants us to notice. After all, He created those thoughts.

No micromanaging, no overanalyzing, just living fully present in each moment and responding to where are heart leads us.

Doesn’t that sound so much easier than balancing those porcelain plates?

Yeah, I think so too.