How do you actively seek self-care while you remain in trust and hope? The answer will be different for everyone. Sometimes the answer is straightforward, but other times, it’s hard to find. Begin by knowing you are not alone in your struggles.
I have been writing about my journey for almost 3 years now. Recently, I took another step on my path to healing. With the death of my mom, I reached the point of feeling overwhelmed. I took my advice and made an appointment for counseling.
Being familiar with Stephen Ministries, I knew my grief would be difficult to navigate. I had read a series of books, Journeying through Grief, written by Stephen Ministries founder, Dr. Kenneth C. Haugk. I agree with this comment another reader had shared in a recent email: “Thank you for writing the Journeying Through Grief books. My wife died earlier this year, and I am finding that grief is a strange and foreign land. It’s a place that requires a guidebook to get one’s bearings, and these books have explained a great deal about the charred and barren landscape around me.”
I imagine my grief as being in a vast ocean, riding the waves of great highs and terrifying lows. Always feeling afloat and isolated in a great expanse. I have felt the waves of grief, one grief after another, washing in and out of my life over the last few years. God directed me to the help I needed. My counselor offers a listening ear, a new perspective, a fresh reassurance that my experiences are not weird or unhealthy.
Be Active in Self-Care
I like acronyms and I developed this one to help me focus on God’s Word, knowing it is sure truth I can rest in daily. TRUST:
Today
Rest
Under
Sure
Truth
Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death?
Romans 8:35 NLT
Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.
Isaiah 41:10 NLT
So be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid and do not panic before them. For the Lord your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail you nor abandon you.
Deuteronomy 31:6 NLT
Ready for another one? God assures me I am not alone or forgotten. I will hold on to His promise of peace with HOPE:
Hold
On
Peace
Endures
Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:6-7
[Jesus said] I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.
John 16:33 NLT
Because of God’s tender mercy, the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide us to the path of peace.
Luke 1:78-80 NLT
You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you!
Isaiah 26:3 NLT
I have seen the morning light. Sailing on to calm seas, I feel confident I will reach my safe harbor. I pray the same for you my friends!
Now when people take an oath, they call on someone greater than themselves to hold them to it. And without any question that oath is binding. God also bound himself with an oath, so that those who received the promise could be perfectly sure that he would never change his mind. So God has given both his promise and his oath. These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It leads us through the curtain into God’s inner sanctuary. Jesus has already gone in there for us. He has become our eternal High Priest in the order of Melchizedek.
Hebrews 6:16-20
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