What to Do With Stress

The sensation is somewhere toward the top of my brain. It is more of a dull, shallow pain, as opposed to the deep, sharp pain of a headache. I imagine it would be the same feeling that an engine straining at high rpm’s would feel, if an engine could feel. Or, maybe what rubber bands would feel that are stretched out and balled up at the core of a golf ball or baseball. The sensation comes on slowly, but once my brain begins to feel this type of pain it takes a long time for it to go away. The sensation I am speaking of goes by the name stress. 

Just writing the word makes that part of my brain tingle a bit. My temples pulse and shutter a bit and my heart rate quickens.

Stress. 

It sounds like something a snake would say when it is trying to get into your head. “Stressssssss.” “Ssstressss. “

This month of August has been so full of activity and problems to solve that I have felt a low-grade stress constantly and a high-grade stress a time or two. 

So what do we do when we feel the low-grade stress? Or what do we do when we are stubborn enough not to take low-grade stress’s warning and press on into the high-grade kind?

Jesus said, “Come to me all who are weary and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Jesus has done this for me a thousand times. If I can acknowledge that I am stressed, humble myself enough to be still, and patient enough to trust Jesus, restoration comes. I have also found that many times the challenges I have been stressed about somehow resolved themselves. 

Grinding it out, drinking a red bull, and trying to prove you can keep going will only leave you revved up, stressed out, and possibly headed for a break down. 

It is amazing that we serve a God who is not a slave driver. Jesus actually said that if we come to Him He will give us rest. As He departed from His disciples He said he was going to leave something with them. What was it? He said, “Peace I leave with you. Not peace like the world gives. The kind of peace that only I can give.” Later in the New Testament we find that the peace Jesus gives is a peace that passes our understanding and goes straight to our heart. 

To me, the hardest part about all this is admitting to being weary, heaven laden, or stressed out. But take a moment. Focus on the top of your brain, and see if there is a sensation like I described in the beginning.

Peace,

David

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