The Journey...To Handling My Stress!!!

Stress is not a four letter word, but it's still evil. In fact, I like to say that stress started out as a four letter word, but when it wanted to take over the world it expanded to six letters just to make things worse for us. There are actually some good things about stress, because if we never felt any at all we would just sit around and chill all the time...nothing would ever get done. In a way, stress makes the world go round.

But stress to the other extreme is just as bad. When we let it take over our lives, we panic. We discover that we have so many things to do that we give ourselves headaches, stomachaches, and other ailments. Sometimes we just say "forget it" and don't accomplish any of the stuff on our list. We eat, smoke, or drink, to make ourselves feel better...and forget about all of those things that still await us and need to be done. While it's good to take a break every once in a while to recharge our batteries, being in chronic break mode leaves us defeated. More work piles up on top of what we didn't get done yet, making the stack of stress even heavier to carry around.

There are times when it feels like stress is my middle name. I've thought about getting my middle name changed legally to Stress on my birth certificate, but that would cost money that I don't have and only add to my stress. Since I was diagnosed with psoriasis, I have discovered in my research on the subject that there is a strong link between this ailment and stress. I shouldn't have been surprised, but seeing it in black and white still gave me a jolt. The prescriptions that my doctor gave me are really helping, and I can see quite a reduction in the patches on my skin already. If I don't want to keep having recurrences, however, I'm going to need to learn to manage my stress better.

Part of this journey is discovering just how much I worry about things and knowing that I need to give that over to God. Keep working hard, listen for His instructions, and He will do the rest. Since He led me to hunt down my pedometer and start moving more, that has been helping with my stress and led to breakthroughs. I'm now up over 7,500 steps a day and going strong. Having this step goal to concentrate on causes me to think less about what usually makes me worry, and getting more exercise definitely relieves some stress. God is working within me in so many ways, and as long as I remember to take each step with Him, the stress enemy will not win!

God's Pedometer

What if God has a pedometer? A unique one for each of us that keeps track of every step we take with Him, and the ones that we try to take on our own?

As I've been working on increasing my step count this week, I began to really think about that special walk...my walk with God. How am I actually doing on the journey with Him? I am doing a lot of soul searching, wondering just how many steps I attempted on my own without His help. Things that I've worried about or tried to force to happen on my time schedule, in my way. Problems that I wanted to solve by myself instead of praying and turning to Him about them. On the other hand...how many steps have I taken the right way, hand in hand with my Savior and placing all of my trust in Him? Have I let Him carry me when I needed him to?

Our walks with God are always the same in that He wants us to journey through life with Him. They are different each day, however, in that God leads us down all kinds of paths with many twists and turns. We have to trust that He is our Compass and will guide us down the correct ones. Deciding which way to go on our own will only get us lost, but if we turn to God He will get us back on track. Sometimes we don't know where the trail is leading, but God does...and He will get us exactly where we need to go.

Over the last couple of days I've gotten the step count on my earthly pedometer up to 7,000, and I will keep increasing that number. I now also realize that I need to continually add to the number on God's pedometer for me...making sure I don't increase the amount I do on my own, but instead focusing on getting the number of steps I walk with Him higher and higher, until they reach infinity!

Keep On Walkin' It Baby....Baby Baby Baby

Now that I'm getting my butt in gear, I looked around the house and located my pedometer. You've got it...it's been THAT long since I've used it. It was in a very safe place...so much so that it was even safe from me! I had it on all the time for quite while (well, except in the shower!), and it kept me honest. Meaning, I wasn't just guessing at how much I was moving all day long. I could actually see what I'd been doing and work on improving.

I found my pedometer on Monday evening and clipped it on yesterday after I woke up. You're supposed to get to at least 10,000 steps each day, and when I wore it consistently I always hit the mark, sometimes getting to 11,000 or a little higher. It felt so good to reach that goal, which also made me want to eat better. I didn't want to undo all of the good work I did!

Yesterday was a big wake up call for me. Even with a workout, I only got to 6,000 steps. Since I freelance from home, a lot of my time is spent sitting at the computer just as if I had a desk job somewhere else. I have to work harder at getting enough steps in each day, because my work is sedentary for the most part. When I worked in an office, I used to find extra reasons to get up and walk around, like delivering messages in person instead of picking up the phone to talk to my co-workers. Every short stroll around the office added to my step count.

I will be working hard at increasing my step count each day. The 6,000 step mark is just a new starting point. It goes to show how my little month long "vacation" affected me, moving around less than I should have been. I needed this jolt to realize that I was going too easy on myself during the times that I wasn't actually performing a workout. Just because you go for your walk/run or use an exercise DVD, it doesn't mean you can "relax" the rest of the day. It's time to REALLY get my walk on!!!