Tag: Anxiety

Let Go and Let God

“The Lord has broken through my enemies before me like a breaking flood.”         2 Samuel 5:20

“What good can come of this situation?” Is a question most of us have asked from time to time. We find ourselves in a negative situation where there seems to be no good answer. And you may be feeling anxious about it. Figuratively speaking, you’re starting to think that the walls are closing in on you.

Well, nothing could be further from the truth. Don’t let your emotions run ahead of your decision making. Stay calm, and breath deeply. And let some good old common sense come into your mind. Or in other words: Let go and let God do His work in the situation.

My maternal grandpa was born in a chaotic situation when good choices were few and far between. Even in spite of that, I believe God’s hand was in it, and the best choice was made.

His mother was from one of the most rural areas of Western North Carolina. And it still is. Few outsiders travel to those areas. An outsider brings suspicion on him or herself. I know because I’ve gone looking for headstones throughout WNC. And I have been asked what I was doing there even with NC plates and having a pronounced WNC southern accent.

Back to my grandfather. His entire life story could be summed up in that one phrase, “Let go and let God do His work in this situation.” Through some effort I’ve been able to weave together the highlights of his life. And, in reading it you’ll see what I’m talking about.

First, he is the only grandpa I knew in my growing up years. My Dad’s dad died of a massive heart attack when my dad turned thirteen years old. He was in his forties and had three of his four children still at home. My paternal grandmother immediately started working in the Knoxville, TN school cafeteria. Not much time to grieve back then. All of that happened during the Great Depression.

My maternal grandfather was born to a fifteen-year-old unmarried girl. She was not quite a woman, but no child either. My math tells me she was pregnant at fourteen and turned fifteen a few months before my grandpa was born. She died a few years later giving birth to her second child, also a son, also illegitimate.

My grandpa’s dad was in his early twenties when the teenage girl from down the road delivered his first child, in 1898. He had just started operating the only grocery store in that whole community. That’s where most likely the two met. Was their quick union consensual? I don’t know. All I know is that my grandpa’s dad rejected his first born and despised the ground his son walked on. That I know to be a fact.

My grandpa’s dad did marry later and had one son. I have a picture of that man and he looks a lot like my grandpa. The resemblance between the two is striking and leaves no doubt that they were brothers, right down to both being small frame wiry looking men. Both had fair skin, slicked back trimmed blond hair, that framed narrow faces.  The eye set, what I call “the look” is the same on both men.

My grandpa, as a child moved from house to house in that community until he reached twelve years of age. He never talked about his childhood but my mother and her sister have shared some memories of their childhood and what they remembered being told about their parents childhoods.

The 1900 Census shows grandpa’s teenage mother living with her parents, but no mention of a boy toddler in the home. The 1910 Census shows him living with his paternal grandmother who had been widowed just prior to that. Then he was sent across the state line to another relative’s farm to pick peaches in Georgia. From there he went to Rome, GA to the Berry’s School for orphaned children where he learned a trade.

Then, in 1917 he left Berry’s School to enter the Navy. Berry College’s archival department had his name on their attendance roll. It doesn’t look like he graduated but being older he just left.

From there Grandpa caught the train to Atlanta and went straight into the Navy. He sailed for France on a frigate. The early idea of that type of ship was that most everyone was a machinist of some type or other. There were guns on the larger ships that required maintenance, ships engines required maintenance, etc. I have a copy of his discharge papers that shows all his assignments.

Experiencing Rejection Twice

After WWI he comes back to the rural community that he was born in. The place where he was rejected in. The place where his dad still ran the only store there. The place where he didn’t have much of a chance at attending school, if any at all.

That was the place where, in his early childhood he had to go from house to house wondering if he could just stay there long enough to work during the Spring planting season. Or the harvesting season. Or the cold Winter season. And who or where did he get a coat from when it snowed? And we usually have a few snowfalls here in WNC every Winter.

Where did this boy get clothes? And shoes for those cold months? Who took care of him when he gashed his knee wide opened? Did any maternal woman give him just one reassuring hug during those early years? Who showed him how to be a responsible man? Which, he did grow up to become very responsible.

My big question is “Why do we always go back to where we’ve experienced the most pain in our lives? What good can come of that?” I’ve done that too and I don’t have any great nor even a good answer to this question.

If you are thinking closure, then maybe you’re not old enough to know the difference between that or just trying to move on with life. If closure were a creature it would be the most elusive living thing on Earth to catch. There is no trap strong enough or quick enough to catch closure. So, let’s all agree to stop trying to catch it.

Well, from there grandpa moves to the nearest bustling community and meets my granny. They married in the early nineteen twenties. I don’t know the exact year, but my mother was born in nineteen twenty-six, she had two older brothers and one younger sister. They attended a Calvary style church that was in walking distance all of my mother’s growing up years.

About 1930 grandpa almost died from falling off an elevated platform onto a concrete floor at a factory he worked at. In falling he cracked his skull open and had “brain bleed.”

The hospital must’ve been close by because he survived a rare operation. Most people with head injuries died back then before they could get to a doctor. Grandpa’s scalp was sliced open and the skin peeled back. Then, the doctor screwed a metal plate over the crack. Of course, this was all done under anesthesia or morphine induced sleep.

Well, long story short, my grandparents went back to farming near the community my granny was from. They both grew up farming and knew it the best. Plus, the metal plate caused my grandpa to have seizures, so he never worked a regular job nor ever drove after that surgery.

They worked their way into owning fifteen acres of wooded farmland that included a livable house. They closed in a “dog trot” back porch and turned it into an indoor bathroom in 1946. My mother was already married to my dad by that time.

Their two sons joined the Navy during WWII. Both came home from the war, quickly married, and moved off. My mother and her sister worked in the naval yard in Panama City, FL as riveters during some of WWII. Then, they attended Knoxville Business school. It was in Knoxville that they met their future husbands, one being my dad.

My parents settled down about fifty miles East of my grandparents in Asheville, NC. By then they had all of us five kids. A few years later my dad convinced my mother to quit her steady factory job and try an idea he had about getting into the souvenir business near the Cherokee Indian Reservation. That one idea made them millionaires several times over.

My grandparents’ four children had seventeen children, collectively speaking. Of those seventeen; three became teachers or connected to Univ. of TN. One obtained her PhD. Another cousin joined the Navy and made Chief Petty Officer within thirteen years. I’m happy to say that all of us siblings and cousins became the “Salt of the Earth” type of people.

It’s always best to let go and let God takeover our problems.  Life is too short to do otherwise.

Living in the Gap of Expectations

  •  “casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” 1 Peter 5:7 ESV

How is living in the gap of expectations working out for you? Well, “what is the gap of expectations” you ask?

When you or I set out to accomplish a goal whether short lived or long range, our expectations are to arrive at that goal, right?

What if the goal is not the end result, though, despite your own best efforts? And, needless to say that others are going to disappoint us also. So, in the end, how well do you adjust to disappointment? Do you linger in an emotional “free-fall” going in and out of depression?

Or do you find yourself telling everyone, “I can handle it.” Or, “I’m fine.” If that’s true than good. But, I believe many of us say those cliches without really meaning it. We could be experiencing an emotional free-fall without fully realizing it.

There is a gap of emotional “free-fall” between expectations and the end result when our goals have not been met. Some of us adjust very quickly and re-prioritize our goals. That’s truly fantastic when it happens.  And I’m happy for you if you’re able to do that when you experience a failure, unexpected bad news, or that life just seems hard right now.

I’m, of course, writing to the ones that don’t easily adjust to the disappointing way of how things have turned out. Especially  when this happens, as it’s going to do, throughout parts of our lives. Not all the time, though, thank goodness.

We really don’t know what we can and cannot handle. It’s not just a cliche that we can be our own enemy. It’s true. And because it’s true, I think we end up self-medicating more than what we want to admit to. I’m guilty of that, too. But when disappointment happens we need to be spiritually and emotionally ready.

One thing that’s helped me the most in overcoming disappointments in my life is the Cognitive Behavior Therapy I’ve had over the last two and a half years on a bi-monthly basis.

Me being more fully engaged in my emotional well-being by going to therapy has helped me to see a more clearer perspective of my different life’s challenges. And it has increased my problem solving capabilities. Or put another way, I’ve learned to think “outside the box” of my own “self-thought” and “couple-thought” of my marriage.

Through the years I’ve tried group therapy and “dropping in” therapy; i.e. staying long enough to feel better then not going back.  And, my husband, Jeff and I have gone to marriage counseling, which we needed. I’m glad he willingly went with me. The end result of our couple counseling has been that Jeff was prescribed some anti-anxiety medication, which he still willingly takes. He says he feels better. And, he does communicate with me and now our extended family on a more positive note.

We wouldn’t have been able to figure out his particular issues all on our own. His past issues along with mine kept us “locking horns” over many issues throughout our four decades and counting marriage. The end result was usually anger, bitterness, and frustration.

Jeff is a “late” baby, and a “replacement” baby, born in 1952. His only living sibling was already married before he started school. And the middle sibling closest in age to him was several years older, passing away with a congenital heart disorder in his teens.

Jeff grew up nearly having an “only child” experience. As a result of that he “sub-consciously” expected to be pampered in his adult life, just like his mother had done during his childhood years.

In part, our childhood “shapes” who we turn out to be in our  adult years. The other part being our individual genetics.

Well, I’ll admit to doing my best to pamper him. That is part of a wife’s role in marriage. And, yes there have been times I’ve found doing this to be quite draining and I believe it added to my already low-grade of depression. But, I couldn’t see this situation clearly all on my own, and didn’t know the “why” of it all until we went to counseling.

Jeff’s mother was an angry, controlling person. She had a difficult personality, to say the least. But his dad was the opposite; he was mellow and pleased with all that he had accomplished in his life.

Both of his parents were about ten years older than my parents. Jeff’s mom was a teenager and his dad had just turned twenty when they married during the height of the Great Depression. My parents were married in their early twenty’s after WWII in 1946.

I was born in 1952, also. So he and I are both “baby boomers.” But I had an entirely different upbringing.  My parents were caring, but sometimes harsh throughout their lives. Plus, I’m the youngest of five children all born within a little more than six years. My dad wasn’t big on parenting us kids, leaving that responsibility to my mother.

My mom, worked hard to keep all of us “glued together” with wonderful meals, kept us three girls busy with cleaning the house, and she always kept an “outside the home” job, as well. There was always a lot of responsibility on my mother’s shoulders.

So when Jeff and I married in our mid-twenties we had different expectations of each other’s role in our lives from the beginning. And through the years, we haven’t always met each other’s expectations either.

All of my and our counseling efforts have had many good results, though. Another idea is to read some small portion of the Bible daily. You can go to Bible Gateway and find several plans to help you read through the Bible on a daily basis. I’ve done this for years and years through self-directed Bible studies. By now I don’t feel like my day is complete without reading at least a short devotion.  And pray often throughout your day.

“pray without ceasing,” 1 Thessalonians 5:17

Above all else, don’t let anxiety rule your day and your life. Anxiety is normally the outflow of two root negative emotions: fear and anger. Solve those two emotions through counseling, medication when needed, Bible study, and prayer. Doing this will help you adjust to having a more positive outlook on life in spite of whatever life “throws” at you.

Taking this action will make life more pleasurable to you and those around you.

 

Are You Going Through Trials and Tribulations?

“These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation but take courage; I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

Do your problems seem unsolvable?

And you can’t see a way out?

Yours and my problems are solvable if we seek God’s help.

Even in the middle of our battles,

God will hear our prayers. (1 Chron 5:20)

His Spirit continually intercedes for us. (Romans 8:26)

Angels bring messages to us from God’s throne. (Dan 9:23)

Reminding us that we are fighting a spiritual battle

“…against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” (Eph 6:12)

“Therefore, let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrew 4:16)