I have been living my life at the hands of my anxiety for years. While I’ve grown a tougher skin and learned countless, healthy coping habits I’m still not happy and living the life I know I can. My anxiety can creep up and leave me paralyzed for days on end. Anxiety keeps me from being the mom I know I can be. It keeps me from socializing and spreading my wings in my community. It wears on my sweet husband, as he’s always trying to lighten my load so something doesn’t trigger the spiral my anxiety can put me in. Enough is enough, and it’s time I turned to the one true thing I know can save me from not only my anxiety, but from everything.

Jesus.

Jesus can deliver me from this crippling mental state. Through His love and grace I can build new habits, change, fail, get up again, grow and so on and so on. Humbly coming before my Lord and Savior is the only way I feel I’ll ever truly be free of my anxieties. When you have God you have everything. As a human I am bound to fail. I know this. The Lord knows this. However, as long as I always turn back to Him, He will welcome me with open arms and guide me through the darkness. 

Despite having Jesus I know that I have to take steps to change this situation too. He made me who I am and He made me a strong and capable person. I will personally be working hard on making sure my anxiety stays in check. I need to live my life and not worry so much. I have the love and support of so many family members and friends that I shouldn’t fear life the way that I do. By diving deep into myself this year I hope to learn and know more about what makes me “tick” and how the relationships I have with other effect my life in positive and negative ways. So hard choices may have to be made, but if they lead me down a brighter path then that’s what will have to be done. 

Compared to some of my other post this one is likely reading differently than what your use to. I’m not worrying about how it flows, instead I’m sharing my heart and what’s on my mind as I think it. I don’t have an outline for this post like I do with some of my other ones. This post is authentically me. Rambling away as thoughts come to mind in regards to this word I’ve chosen. Something I plan to do this year is come to you in this raw, broken form to share my life. I know I can put together a well written, pretty blog post. However opening up and being vulnerable is harder. I’ve been burned in the past when doing that and it shook me up pretty bad. I almost walked away from writing on my own platform ever again. Luckily my desire to do something I enjoy prevailed over the fear and here I am. I may only have a handful of people that actually read what I write here, but that’s okay. I’m not here to make it big, or make money. I’m here to use this as an outlet. An escape. A productive way to spend my day instead of zoning out in front of a screen. My anxiety welcomes the latter and makes me second guess the more productive plans I have for myself. Which makes my word that much more needed and prevalent. 

I need DELIVERANCE. I need saved. I need to be set free.

Have you chosen a word for 2019? If so, share it in the comments. I’d love to pray for you and root you on this year. Looking forward to seeing what you have picked!