Handling Stress with Grace

AHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Okay, so now that that is out of my system let me tell you something I'm learning.

I do not handle stress well.

I get anxious over everything, and stress just elevates that anxiety to a new level.

So let me tell you a little about this year. I started back to school, got married, moved, changed jobs, and faced other life stressors that I would have been handle exceptionally well had I not already been undergoing massive, big life changes.

I started this year single. I Know, you must be asking "How is that possible since I also got married this year???" Let me explain a little backstory. Towards the end of last year I broke up with my fiancé. There's a much bigger story related to that but to sum it up I realized, over time and studying my behavior and digging into attachment theory, I did it because it was the first relationship where I started to feel some walls come down and that SCARED the living daylights out of me. But man did that suck. I missed him like crazy and I knew I loved him. So after much discussion, and a promise that I wouldn't ever just run away again out of fear, we got back together. I then started classes to help finish the prerequisites for the LPN to RN bridge program I intended to enter.

While in school, I planned a wedding and a move from my apartment into my future husband's house.

Shortly after getting married, but before the move from the apartment to the house was complete. I was offered a new job, instead of being a floor nurse, I was moving into management.

If you've ever known anyone in management, they will tell you that it is a HIGH stress job.

I was learning new skills, being tested in my leadership abilities, placed in charge of nurses that have higher credentials and more experience than I had. I have had more responsibility than I've ever had in my entire life. All while learning how to be a wife and a homemaker for a family how to navigate relationship challenges, learning to help coparent, adjusting to having an adult child with disabilities.

I turned into an anxiety monster. I turned into a version of myself that I don't like. I had to pause and reevaluate how I was treating everyone around me. I wasn't nasty or abusive, but I wasn't showing love.

So what does the bible say?

Matthew 6:34 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

1 Peter 5:6,7 6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

Matthew 11:28 28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

2 Thessalonians 3:16 16 Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way. The Lord be with all of you.

I realized I wasn't leaning on God. I was leaning on my own strength and my own inadequate abilities to get me through this tough time. I wasn't seeking advice of comfort prayer from those wiser than I, with the exception of my therapist.

I am supposed to be a help to my husband, and I was adding more stress and not providing a safe space for him. Now I know that goes both ways. But let me tell you, my husband, at least so far, has been nothing but an encouragement to me and a hard-working provider that gives me the safe space that I need to feel and process everything we are both going through. (Some of which I can't even disclose on this forum).

Neither of us are perfect, but we both work to be the best we can for each other. And it's my job to lean on God so that I can be the woman he needs me to be, the person I desire to be and the example that God wants me to be.