The Scope of it All

“When I think of the wisdom and scope of God’s plan, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will give you mighty inner strength through his Holy Spirit. And I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts as you trust in him. May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love really is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully understand it. Then you will be filled with the fullness of life and power that comes from God.”

Ephesians 3:14-19

One of my goals in 2021 was to read the entire new testament this year. I’m happy to report that I am AHEAD OF SCHEDULE! But as I’ve gotten to the shorter books that contain letters, I can’t help but notice that they are full of advice. Paul writes about how Christians should live, about following Christ instead of rules, and about the basics of the Christian faith. Paul is a writer with passion! And I can’t help but love when he gets on his soapbox and preaches directly to these churches about what they are doing wrong via letter.

This prayer though? It’s one of my favorite things I’ve read so far.

Let’s break it down! There is so much that can relate to our experience as we battle our mental health.

God’s Plan

I turn 30 in January. I’ve said to many people over the past few months that I am thrilled to be entering my 30’s because my 20’s were ROUGH. God taught me a lot. My valleys were deep… but my mountains were made all that much higher.

In my 20’s I graduated college, got my first teaching job, broke up with who I thought was the love of my life, met the man that God made especially for me, got engaged, got a dog, lost my first teaching job, got married, moved 2 hours away from my hometown, got my second teaching job, got another dog, plunged deep into anxiety and panic, bought a house, got diagnosed with an eating disorder, went to treatment, went back to teaching, started this blog, COVID hit, and just last April won teacher of the year at my school.

Whew.

See what I mean? Valleys to Mountains over and over. Throughout the entirety of my 20’s God has been teaching me lessons. HE is in control, not me. His ways are better than anything I could ever imagine for me. His timing is better. Obedience is essential in walking with God through this life.

Without these lessons, I wouldn’t be who I am today. I thank GOD for all of the valleys.

The valleys of unemployment, of being told that I’m not good enough to be a teacher, put me at my dream school and eventually to winning teacher of the year.

The valley of my Eating Disorder put me in treatment where I met one of my soul sisters. This valley also put me into submission and obedience to God, something I had fought and ignored for a long time. This valley gave me this space on the internet.

The valley of anxiety and panic still plague me, but I know that God is doing something with that too. There is a lesson to still be learned. And in time, I know that the valley will turn into a mountain.

I’m someone who tends to look at life through rose-colored glasses and ignore problems until they are so big they can’t be ignored. My 20’s have taught me to watch out for the small things because they can turn into big things.

God’s plan is more magnificent than you could ever imagine. If you are in a valley right now, in a situation that you just don’t understand, I can tell you that if you’ll let God use it, you will come out victorious. You’ll learn the lessons that you need. Trust the plan, even in the deepest valleys. God is there with you. He already has it worked out for you.

Inner Strength

When I entered ED treatment, one of the thoughts that plagued me was “I can’t handle this.” I had never thought of myself as a resilient person. Instead, I viewed myself as a victim of my situation. It was only through treatment with the conjunction of my faith that I am alive today. Being terrified of something that you need to keep you alive is its own kind of terror. Having to feel that terror day in, and day out, for months and years is something unique. No one seems to understand, which brings its own sadness and anxiety.

When we turn to God consistently in our lives, we start hearing Him in our minds and souls. I hear God nudge me towards decisions and tasks. I feel God speak to me daily.

Do you?

Listening to God and being obedient will give you a deep relationship with the Holy Spirit living inside of you. Talking to God daily through prayer, spending silent time with Him, doing devotionals, and reading your Bible are all ways that can help you ‘tune in’ to God speaking to you through the Holy Spirit. When we aren’t focused on God in our lives, it makes it harder to hear Him. And the quieter that we make Him in our lives, the less direction we get. The more anxious, depressed, and overwhelmed we feel, the more we turn to what we can control. When we aren’t focused on God, we are focused on the world, our problems, and our fears.

God’s resources are UNLIMITED!!! He will do what He needs to do to get your attention if you turn away from Him. In my 20’s, I ignored God A LOT. I know how it feels to be isolated from Him by my own volition.

But those valleys in life force us to turn our eyes toward Jesus. They force us to look at ourselves, our sins, our mistakes, our habits, and our thoughts. They force us to see that we aren’t in control of anything and that we need the guidance that only our Father can provide for us.

The more that we take the guidance given, the more obedient we are, the more inner strength we get. We trust the Lord. And through that trust, faith and peace wash over us when circumstances get overwhelming. Paul calls this a MIGHTY inner strength. It’s not about what we believe that we can do. It’s about the power of our God, who is ALL MIGHTY. When we stop relying on ourselves to fix it all and instead trust God to take control, and actually step back from the situation, we will be guided on how to proceed. We can trust that God will never lead us astray. He will always lead us to the path of GOOD.

At Home in Christ

A home should be a place that you trust. While I recognize that all of us didn’t grow up this way, we do know that that is what we ultimately want. We want a home to feel safe, protected, and happy in. Christ gives us that home at all times. The doors are always open, He is always ready to listen and give direction. Often, instead of walking through that door, we decide to go into the wilderness on our own. We decide that listening to the world is better than listening to God.

In our fight for control over our own lives, in the misplaced thinking that we know best, we leave God out of the equation altogether.

In that warped thinking, we never feel at home. Instead, anxiety, sadness, and other overwhelming emotions control us. In the fight to control our own lives, we lose this control to emotions. When we let emotions guide us instead of God, we lose every time.

I have great news! At any time, you can choose to come back to God. You can choose to walk through those doors again and talk with Him. His face is never turned from you. His ears are never closed to you. He hasn’t left you, you’ve been ignoring Him.

Come home. It might be uncomfortable for a while as you make yourself at home again in His presence. You might have a few (or more than a few) tough conversations. But the more that you chose to turn to Him, the more at home you will start to feel again. That trust will build. You won’t get there overnight, and that’s okay. This isn’t about perfection. It’s about your choice to turn to Him and obey Him.

As you continue to build that home in Christ, your roots will start to grow deeper. You will see how amazing His plan has been all along. You will see that your valleys were not for nothing, they were for you to grow. You will see that your mountains bring you the brightest light because of His blessings and promises. You will see that it has all always been HIS PLAN.

As your roots grow deeper it will take more to make you sway. You will learn to trust Him through it all. Deep roots in God only happen through obedience to Him. He will speak to you and give you instructions. It is imperative that you listen to HIM instead of THEM. The world will continually try and uproot you. It is up to you to stay in God’s house, planted firmly with Him.

God’s Love for You

God’s love is unlimited, unmeasurable and unfathomable. He loves us so completely and wonderfully that we will absolutely never understand the depth of it. The Creator of the Universe wanted to put you on this planet. And He put you here for a purpose. Do you really think that He would lead you astray? Do you really believe that He would put something in your life that would ultimately harm you?

The problem is, we often get confused with what we allow into our lives versus what God has put into our lives. We get upset over a boy breaking our heart… but did we ask God if that was a boy that He wanted us to date? Instead of trying to continually guide our minds to think about holy things, we continue to do and think as the world does, and yet we still seem to wonder why we can’t get a hold of our mental health.

When God allows something that He ordained into our lives, it is because He loves us. Yet when we continually allow things that we know aren’t God-ordained into our lives we blame God for the outcome.

Let me be clear: God LOVES you, no matter what. There is absolutely nothing that you can do or say on this planet that can separate you from God’s love other than not accepting Jesus Christ as your Savior (please email me at heightsinheels.com if you would like an email or phone call for more information on being saved!). You can keep making mistake after mistake and making misstep after misstep and God will still love you and help you.

But you have to start taking some responsibility for your own choices, actions, and obedience. For a long time, I blamed God for my anxiety and my panic. I would cry out to Him “Why are you allowing this into my life! Please make it stop!” Every time, God helped me through support systems, therapy, prayer, and medications. But I never thought about changing my actions until recently.

We are so quick to blame God for the problems in our lives when we don’t take time to look at ourselves.

I have a diagnosed panic and anxiety disorder. My anxiety can be debilitating. My panic attacks can last for hours and leave me hospitalized. I know the depths that my mind can take me to. But I realized that I wasn’t fighting these battles of mental health on a spiritual plane. I was relying only on myself to get through. Only at the worst of it was I crying out to the Lord.

God loves me. He doesn’t want me plagued with this my whole life. But it’s not something that I’ve handed over to Him. My mind is not yet His. I’m still trying to hold onto control. But why? I can’t solve this alone! I am at a point where I have struggled with anxiety and panic for more than 20 years. What I am doing isn’t working!! So why am I still holding onto control so tightly? Why am I not handing this over to my Father and fighting this spiritually?

It might be because I don’t trust Him. It might be because I don’t trust His love, His process or His plan. It might be because I like the illusion of control in my life.

While obviously, this is something I’m still working through, the truth that I am doing my best to always hold onto is that God loves me. He loves me more than any human on this planet ever could. And in that love, He wants to take care of me.

God loves you. He wants to take care of you. What are you holding on to? What are you refusing to hand over? What don’t you trust? Bring that to God today and talk with Him about it openly.

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I am ALWAYS praying for you,