“What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.” Psalm 56:3 KJV

Any kind of change is hard and scary. It doesn’t matter how big or small the change is. Whether it is a new job (hello there from the new ARMS admin!) or deciding to cut your hair. During times of transition in my life, I often find myself paralyzed with fear. My thoughts begin to race…What if I fail? What will people think? What will they say? Fear gives way to panic and panic to anxiety, and the next thing I know I am drowning in a sea of thoughts instead of making any movement towards change.

Having suffered from abuse, I often must stop and ask myself a series of questions. Such as:

1. Where are these thoughts coming from?
2. Can I trust these thoughts?
3. What does God have to say about the matter?

99.99% percent of the time any thought which plagues me with anxiety comes from the conditioning my abusers tried to set in place. They gifted me with an internal recording of lies that is more than happy to play on repeat if I choose to continue to listen to it. However, this recording is not the truth of how God feels about me.

When I return to this realization and focus on God’s words, I immediately stop whatever it is that I am doing and breathe in the phrase “what time I am afraid” and breathe out the phrase “I will trust in Thee”. I repeat this until the anxiety lifts and the thoughts slowly ease. Sometimes it takes seven rounds, sometimes it takes twenty, but the simple reminder that there is a BIG God in my life that I can trust with everything, even a small change, is all I need. Armed with this knowledge, I walk forward confidently, and change isn’t so scary after all.

-E.C.

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