"I am experiencing so much anxiety!"

"I feel totally stuck!"

"My past haunts me..."

"WHEN is it going to get EASIER?!?!?!"

We live in an era where our nerves are frazzled, our brains feel paralyzed, and our hearts feel pretty beaten up.  We self-medicate and disengage through the use of social media, video games, TikToc videos and more.  And is it any wonder?  No generation before has dealt with the onslaught of things that are, quite literally, scientifically designed to give us huge dopamine hits and adrenaline rushes, and then let's not talk about what the nightly news does to us!

We are all living in flight, fight, or freeze mode 24/7 and we don't realize it.  And the last time I checked, we weren't going to be capable of shutting off the entire 21st century so that we can give our nervous systems a break.

Recently I saw a story (online, of course!) about a message that Duke University Women's Basketball coach, Kara Lawson, offered to her team.  What she had to say was something we don't hear much these days, as we all wrestle with the day to day stressors of the modern life.  What was that message?

"Handle Hard Better".

That day at practice in 2022 she basically told it like it is, without soft-peddling anything for her young team.  I quote her here,:  "We all wait in life for things to get easier. It will never get easier. What happens is you handle hard better."

Many books have been written in recent years about building grit and determination, about reslience and growth.  I felt like Coach Lawson's quote above summed all of those books up in three simple and plainly spoken sentences.  Life will not get easier, and if we wait for that we are on a fool's errand.  The only thing we can do is keep working on how to handle "hard" better.

Have you ever noticed that, as often happens, Scripture teaches us this same lesson?  Some think that declaring one's self a Christian means that the Magic Genie God is going to make everything easier for us, and yet throughout Scripture we are reminded that is not at all true!  

In John 16:33 we are told, "In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”  God doesn't promise us that life will be easy, but that God's presence will always be with us. In Romans 5:3-5 we hear in part, "...but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;  perseverance, character; and character, hope."

Too often we reduce God to a "fixer" rather than a "companion" for our life's journey, and in doing so we essentially outsource our own resliency.  But that is not the point at ALL!  God believes in our own ability to muster strength, to master growth, and to molify ourselves!  The Spirit sees far more ability in us than we do.

As much as it pains many of us, and not to dismiss true mental health struggles, maybe what we need to learn is how to "handle hard better", as well as begin to believe in our ability to do so as much as God believes in our ability to do so!

In Light and Love,

Rev. Cindy