For He Is Worthy

As I sit here “alone” for the first time in weeks, reading my new Lysa TerKeurst book, I find my mind roaming wildly. I’m trying to learn about God, but right now my mind is stuck. Stuck on thanksgiving. Not the rapidly approaching November holiday, but the thanksgiving that occurs daily from the acknowledgement of all of the blessings that God has rained down on such an undeserving sinner.

I’m thinking of so many worldly situations that have been consuming me recently. I’m thinking about the way my worldly circumstances have interrupted what I would consider to be a two-month-long conversation with my Saviour. After getting my priorities back in order, I’m thinking of how this quiet time “alone” with God truly feels like I am getting back to being myself. “Myself” isn’t me, or simply something that I enjoy doing. “Myself” is a child passionately worshipping a God who created me for just this purpose. I’m thinking of how beautiful it is to be able to return into the loving arms of my Father, regardless of the mistakes I’ve made or how my focus may have temporarily shifted.

Suddenly all of these all-consuming worldly circumstances have simply faded into the background of my life and shine through, not as “problems” that I have been “dealing with”, but as the blessings that my Father has shown me.
My only real problem all this time has been that I allowed for my focus to stray from the One who deserves and is fully worthy of receiving such attention.

My mind is overflowing with love and gratitude toward the One who loves me like no other.
Rather than trying to focus on my reading, I am choosing to focus on my Lord! I am basking in the time and the opportunity to just thank Him, and to love Him, and glorify Him.
For He is worthy!

 

I Am…Socially Challenged

I’ve known for just over a year now that I have what doctors call “Social Anxiety Disorder“. Growing up, I wasn’t in many social situations, and I guess just never really learned how to “normally” function in them. Well-I thought that I was getting things under control and I was owning it, but reality hit, as it has a way of doing, and I realized that I really only had the social anxiety under control because I wasn’t ever in any new social situations.

Around two weeks ago I decided to make friends with someone who my husband works with, and as far as my part is concerned, it has been nearly disastrous. I’m incredibly thankful that this person has so much patience, because I’ve been annoying myself, and can’t imagine how somebody else would put up with it. It has been a difficult couple-of-weeks but I’ve been learning from it, and things are finally looking to a more positive place. In fact, just last night I came to the realization that I had still been using my panic as a crutch rather than trying to overcome it in certain situations. Rather than taking the control when I needed to, I just brushed the problems off with “oh, my panic causes that”. However, not allowing myself to remain the same where I know that I need to improve, I refuse to ignore the chance to learn from this new experience and have come up with some new ways to combat my panic and anxiety according to what the situation calls for.

Due to caring far too much what others think of me (as well as another nasty habit of performing a large percentage of my communication through text messaging), I have developed a tendency to panic after I send a message and decide that I need to follow  up with three or four more messages…before the other person gets a chance to reply. This would be the thing that I mentioned that is not only annoying to people on the receiving end, but in all honesty, it’s not something I’m okay with doing. Therefore, I have decided that when I feel the need to emit these asinine mitigations, I am going to instead implement my practice of journaling, be it in the form of an unsent letter, or just a way to rationalize just how uncalled for the additional messages would be.

It seems odd still to me that these are truly problems present in my life, but regardless, they are legitimate problems, and I am determined to find the champion solutions. While I’ve never actually met anybody else who shares these issues, I do know that they are out there, and I still hold hope that just maybe one of them could stumble across my blog, and perhaps find some information that I’ve shared to be of use for themselves, as well as feeling some comfort in knowing that they are not alone.