stop that.

tonight's goal: get back to this kind of place

Do you ever get yourself so worked up over something (usually something that's probably nothing but your mind is too creative for its own good and creates a scenario that just keeps getting worse the more you think about it) that you honestly feel like your heart is going to beat out of your chest?

Welcome to this moment.

I can't turn my mind off. I know I'm doing myself no service here but there is a thought up there that just keeps growing, and churning, and mutating... It's making me feel unhinged and I don't like it.

Now to be fair to my own frantic little head here, there is some reason for my brain to be doing the foxtrot to a waltz beat, so part of me doesn't feel entirely crazy. At the same time however, what do I think I'm going to accomplish by feeling this way? I mean really.

There is some truth to the phrase, "You can't help how you feel" but at a certain point, that becomes a cop-out. One of the things I've spent the last six months (wow, six months, has it been that long?) working on has been letting it go. When things happen in or to my life that I don't like, or have not authorized, there became two very clear options - wallow or get over it. One would definitely be easier than the other, but which one would actually serve me better? Therein lies that strength my mom promised would come out of the horridness of a breakup.

I've learned many things from this turn my life has taken, chief among them the power to take control over my own life by relinquishing some of it in the form of laying down my burdens in front of One who can help me bear them. I realize it's almost a contradiction, but do you know what I mean?

Basically, the way I see it is this: life has presented me with a situation/problem/thought/whathaveyou that isn't ideal. The easy option is to let it fluster me and spend the next week irritated and let it fester. I could accept that that's "just the way I feel" and let it ruin everything else in my life, be it long term or just until something shiny comes along.

Or, I could spend a minute feeling what I feel and then make the *#^%ing choice to rise above it. When you reach a certain point in life you learn that you can take control and be the person you want to be. In my case, the person I want to be is a person that doesn't let things beyond her control ruin everything else. I choose to let it go and trust that Someone Up There has a plan. I can choose to not let a negative thought mess with my head because really, even if the thing I (hope) I've only created in my mind turns out to be real (which, in the great cosmic hilarity of it all, actually happened not too long ago) what do I plan on doing about it? It's not in my control, it's not something I  can change, so why should I let it keep bringing me down?


It's easier said than done, that's for sure. But in doing so I can feel myself coming into the person I so badly want to be. A person who decides the direction of her own life while at the same time trusting Him to guide me along the way. 


(Mental image: while He may bring me to a certain fork in the road, I am the one who gets to decide which fork to travel down)


This is something that I've decided to plant in my mind for the rest of the evening, as opposed to the situation I invented (eff Tucker, I hope I just invented it and it's not real, ugh):


‘Do not fear, for I am with you; do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.’ Isaiah 41:10


Must. Trust.




(photo by Maria at John & Laura's wedding rehearsal)