School starts for my children next week. I have one starting kindergarten, one starting middle school and my oldest will be a freshman in high school. Were leaving later today for the old school supply shopping. I will say excitement and anxiety is quite high in the Mallasch house lately.
My oldest has stressed over her school schedule multiple times. Yesterday was a day of doors banging and arguing. I know things will work themselves out in the end but she doesn’t see that just yet. My youngest who just turned 5 on Sunday told me twice he was “sad” and just wanted to stay home. My middle child is just really quiet, she’s usually quite talkative.
Unfortunately this change in schools is something we all just have to go through. There’s no real way around it. So how do you manage your anxiety when you are walking through the circumstance that is causing you pain?
A wise boss of mine once told me when I was in the midst of a stressful situation, “this too shall pass.” And she was right. So right I remember her advice but have forgotten the circumstance. Many times with my back when I was faced with another epidural I would remind myself that the side effects only lasted a week and I just had to get through that week.
Being prepared also helps. I am still fearful of driving more than 30 minutes at a time. A few months ago I wanted to go to see a play that was about 45 minutes away. I was talking to my therapist about it and told him I didn’t know what to do If I couldn’t keep driving. He said, you need a back up plan. What if you parked the car when you got to a point where you had pain and called an uber? Then when the play is over you can uber back to your car and drive the rest of the way home. Having that back up plan of knowing that I could call and uber took away a great deal of anxiety that I had about driving. So sometimes preparing for a circumstance can alleviate the stress of it as well.
I find a lot of peace in God when I am in stressful situations. However, sometimes He allows us to go through a stressful situation multiple times in order to build up our character. Yesterday I had to get blood work done. Now I’m a hard stick. Most of the time I get poked more than once and success is in my hand or wrist not in my arm. I was not prepared to give blood yesterday. It was definitely a surprise situation. Normally when I know that I’m going to have to give blood I drink a lot of water and wear warmer clothes. Not the case yesterday. So I told the nurse that she had a challenge and asked for some water and prayed, Dear God please help her get it on the first stick. Well God didn’t answer that prayer so my prayer changed to just help her get what she needs. She got it on the second try, in my hand. There was a time when I would get really stressed out about being poked by a needle. I would dread it and make a big deal about it. But God has made me go though this enough times that I can have peace in it no matter how many times it takes.
Jesus promised His peace will always be with us. Sometimes we just have to surrender to the fact that we’re not in control of our situations, He is and there is peace in know that our Father will work it out. I hope I can relay that to my children today as we are getting our supplies and preparing for next week. I hope they see God is working it all out for their good too.
2BecomeBrave 