He Is My Strength

70 pounds feels a lot heavier when you are battling depression and anxiety. You fight with everything you have just to lift the weight. It's nothing compared to the weight you're carrying inside. The voices in your head keep saying just let it go. Try again tomorrow. But then you remember Phil 4:13, "I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength."

You begin to push yourself through each rep. Determined to finish your set. Your heart is racing, sweat is running down your face and you use all you have to get those last few reps in.

When you're finished you feel a sense of peace and calm. You notice that voices have silenced themselves. 

Those voices come when we are feeling weak. Their goal is to pull us farther and farther away from God. It's on us to shut them up and get ourselves back on track and put the work in to strengthen ourselves and our faith.

Our Path

We were walking out of church Sunday and my son was running towards our car…or so he thought. He was ahead of me and I pointed in the direction of where I parked and said, "we're parked that way". Without turning to see where I was pointing he just ran until I called his name and he turned and looked at me to see I was pointing in a different direction than what he was going. He went a little farther than needed but once he turned and realized he didn't know where he was going. He found his path again.

We do this at times with God. We think we know the path to where we want to go. We think we know how to get there. Not fully putting our faith in the fact that God is pointing us in the right direction, we just have to turn around and see where He's pointing. When we don't follow God's path it tends to take us longer to get to where he wants us because we went too far without Him.

Loving An Addict

 

When someone you love battles addiction you will see things you never thought you would. You hear about it everywhere but you never think it's something that could happen to someone close to you. You hear about the withdrawals, shakes, and the relapses. I have watched people I barely knew go through this. I have witnessed Narcan administered to someone I passed by at a get together. I never imagined that it would happen to someone close to me. I never thought that someone I cared about would be dealing with that kind of pain.

Many people want to walk away from them. Others want to stay and support. Some decide to be there through the shakes, shivers and withdrawals.

I have learned so much from my experience. I have learned compassion that I couldn't have learned from anywhere else. I learned that it is possible to love someone without approving of their decisions. I learned heartbreak. It's a different kind of heartbreak. The kind of heartbreak where you see the person you knew being robbed of everything you know they can be.

I am not trying to romanticize addiction. It is the one thing that takes over their life. This is not me accepting where or who they are. This is me trying to bring awareness. To bring hope to those who feel lost.

Self-destruction feels more like a survival. You can try, but you cannot fix them. They are in charge of their own recovery. Nothing will change unless they want it. Just be there, don't lose hope in them.

Let them know they are never alone. Sometimes if feels like the entire world is against them. That everything is falling apart. Just simply be there.