It’s that time of the week where you are thankful it isn’t the beginning and praying that it is the end. The time of the week that you’re dragging out of bed looking for a pick me upper to head into work. The other day I asked my sister if it is considered a first world problem because I was 100% felt the need to stay home but I couldn’t talk myself into it. Even the loyal-crazy-hardworking-drive themselves into the ground workers struggle to make it.

What do y’all do to get through the work week?

Hoping it will help I’ve been really focusing on changing my thoughts. Well, not necessarily changing my thoughts. More just not allowing it to control me. The sermon that my Pastor preached a few weeks ago about our thoughts have embedded itself in my brain. I know that’s good because as someone who suffers from anxiety and depression the struggle is real with the battle between my thoughts.

Yesterday morning my husband tried to wake me to let me know he was on his way to work. I couldn’t be bothered to wake up. My body can feel the change in the weather and it takes everything in me to not ache like an old body coming out of bed. Yesterday was one of those mornings. I had another fitful eight hours of sleep and waking up 2 minutes before my alarm – well, I wasn’t having it. Usually, mornings like that means the twenty thousand thoughts I’m thinking –

I’m never going to amount to anything 

I suck at my job, I’m a horrible wife

I will always be barren

I deserve the cards that have been dealt

– come flooding in, stifling what little air I allow myself to breath. And so, when I let him know I was leaving home and heading into the traffic that crawls into NE Portland he asked: U ok? 

Normally, I’d be frustrated with that simple text. I wouldn’t have found his concern honorable or chivalrous or sweet. Normally I would see it as an attack, a way for him to keep me in the glass bubble because he thinks I’m fragile. And that’s when I realized how incredibly powerful our thoughts are. When I allow negative thoughts that are completely contrary to how God sees me to be “fact” that is when all hell breaks loose in my life. That is when nothing is going right and I’m stuck in bed dealing with the tremors of anxiety and depression.

When my husband asked me how I was instead of instantly becoming defensive I took a step back. I took a breath. As I took that breath I said a quick prayer. I was tired. Exhausted. I was walking out the door and running late. God, help. A quick prayer of faith to get me through the day. Then I replied with the truth, “I’m okay but this is how I feel…, my brain and heart is okay. Promise.”  I heard two voices that morning. When I chose to listen to one it drowned out the other. I was able to make the best of my day.

I have struggled with the negative and the positive thoughts of life. When I think I’m a failure, see myself as a failure, believe I am a failure, then guess what? I’ll believe I am a failure. Your thoughts affect how you feel, how you think, how you react. Negative thoughts, if listened to will affect how you feel. In turn it will disrupt your life and restrain you from living the life that you deserve.

Get up. Disagree with that anxiety. Contract the depression. Take that small first step. I know saying it is easier than doing it. But, you can do it. I believe in you. Stop listening to the wrong voice. You hear two voices, the good and the bad angel sitting on your shoulder enticing you, swaying you to go one way or the other. I can tell you right now, when I chose to be positive my day went a lot smoother.

Which voice are you going to choose today? xoxo