“If I could choose just one super power, I would choose calming down.” @Eden_Eats

It was just a few months after my best friend passed away and I became guardian of her one-year-old daughter. I’m pretty sure I was still in total shock. Shock is a fairly normal response when you’ve been married for 25 years, you’ve already raised your kids when suddenly you are parents of a toddler again.

It’s like whiplash. 

My youngest biological daughter, 20 years old at the time, told my husband and I we needed to watch Life As We Know It with Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel. It’s where two single adults become caregivers to an orphaned girl when their mutual best friends die in an accident.

Watching the movie was a beyond-ridiculous experience. Almost every scene had us staring at the TV with an “I can’t believe this is our life” look on our faces while we went from laughing to crying and back to laughing again.

We chose to be there for babygirl and we would do it all over again.* But I had no idea what was about to happen to my heart. After about three months of shock, navigating the trauma like a zombie, anxiety like I’ve never experienced before set in. Anxiety attacks that would last up to 18 hours. A dysphoric disorder. Post-adoption depression (akin to postpartum depression) and chronic fatigue syndrome to boot. 

I immediately sought counseling, therapy and my medical doctor. Through genetic testing we discovered I have a genetic mutation called MTHFR (seriously…could they find a better acronym?). This mutation, turns out, was the explanation behind my struggle with depression that spanned my then 44 years of life. 

Not that I didn’t experience actual traumatic events during my lifetime. The amount of negative high-emotional-impact life events I’ve experienced is (ironically) too depressing to list. Nonetheless, it was surreal to learn that when life got hard for me it was exponentially more difficult to come out of depression, fear and anxiety than it is for many people. 

All of this to say, when it comes to depression and anxiety, I know this one. I have had to do all the work of digging up the past, processing grief, fear and loss, figuring out how to not live my life waiting for the other shoe to drop.

During the best of times I maintained a low-level detachment that kept me from enjoying the good moments without reaching for a dopamine hit of some kind. But the worst times were nothing short of a living nightmare. 

Therapy, doctors, counselors, friends, worship and medication all help while we’re trying to sort everything out. Despite what religion has tried to sell us, the cure to a mental health crisis isn’t doing more for God. More prayer, more Bible study, upping your financial giving and volunteer hours are not going to help when the underlying issue hasn’t been dealt with. When we do these things in a desperate attempt to get God to move on our behalf it’s called striving. It’s not thriving. 

Here’s what I’ve found to be key to moving through powerful negative emotions: reducing the pressure of having to do all the things and entering into God’s rest. 

As I studied one of the most quoted scriptures about not worrying but praying about everything, I saw a step-by-step process to help calm the fight-or-flight response. These eight steps may not work the first time you try them. Maybe not even the second time. But if you will make this your first response to moments of anxiety, you will eventually loosen the grip it has on you as you exchange fear for peace and rest.

Sign up below to receive two on-demand video teachings and a printable card of the 8-Steps to Calm Anxiety and Get Your Spark Back. This is going to help you!!

*After 14-months of being her parents, and having to navigate the legal system and court-appointed attorneys, we were forced into a position to find her a forever-home. While we are heartbroken, she is THRIVING and that is what matters the most.

Warning: the cheesy girl analogy post 😜, but there is a concept essential to your walk with God I can’t think of a better way to explain. So here goes…

It’s like when you love that new top on the rack but when you get home it’s just another shirt in a closet full of stuff you hate.

This is the spiritual exercise of put on, put off.

You put on the shirt in the dressing room. You’re rockin’ it. The dressing room mirror takes ten pounds off. You’re feelin’ it. You bring it home.

It’s in the closet. You try it on the next morning. You try every pair of pants you have, then skirts, then shorts, then skorts and you hate skorts. The ten pounds are back, and who made this ugly shirt anyway? You’re taking it back. Except you ripped the tags off and lost the receipt.

The you with the amazing new top and the disappearing pounds is your new man. The you with the ugly shirt and the extra pounds is the old man.

The you with the new top is the full armor of God. The you with the old top is the unguarded, insecure, codependent that doesn’t know who she is and what is available to her.

What changed? The new top didn’t change. You didn’t gain ten pounds from the store to home. What changed was the mirror through which you saw yourself.

“Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices, and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” Colossians 3:9-10 NIV

“Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes…Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” Ephesians 6:11, 13-17 NIV

You can literally take these two verses as the mental exercises that they are intended to be. You have a new nature. Your new nature is righteous. What does righteous mean? Righteousness is when you are functioning as you should be. Righteousness is when your new nature, with its Christ-like attributes, comes forward in you because you have accepted it as who you really are.

Stop lying to yourself and put on the truth. Stop seeing yourself through the lens of fear and see yourself walking in the spirit of power, love, and self-discipline that is in you now. Today. In this reality, on this side of heaven!

Renew your mind in the knowledge that you now have a new self. See yourself taking off the belt of the lie that you can’t be healed and victorious. Literally, visualize yourself putting on the belt of truth that has been tested against what Jesus died to give you. Did He die to heal you? What does being healed look like? How does it feel? Try it on!

Which new shoes would match your belt? How about the shoes of the Gospel of Peace? The Gospel of Peace says there is peace between you and God. He doesn’t have to let you remain sick to flesh out your old man. He only sees Jesus’ righteousness when He examines you. You need to start seeing it too! Start walking through life with shoes that can trek through any storm because you KNOW God has no need to test you. He has already approved you!

That new top? Don’t lie to yourself. It fits just right. It’s the breastplate of righteousness. It’s how you take any arrow. You can take any arrow because you know it’s not your righteousness you walk in. It’s HIS. A breastplate guards your heart against lying arrows that seek to penetrate your identity. That new top is INPENATRABLE because Jesus gave it to you.

I could go on and on with the cheesy analogy but you get the point. Whatever you’re facing today, put on your new man and get rid of that old man with its lies and false images. When you use this visual exercise to write the truth on your heart, your new nature will come forward and you can start functioning in it.

It is the real you now.