Be Prepared!
You must have a plan to be successful!
Trusty bell
Many years ago, I was driving home from the beach with my two children. Elizabeth was about 10 and Luke about one. As we were driving up the Interstate headed home, suddenly the car stopped. What a horrible thing to experience!! I quickly realized that the car was out of gas. How on earth could that be?? I had a new-to-me car that had many fancy extras that I was not accustomed to. One of them was a bell that dinged if the car was low on gas when you started it. I quickly acclimated to that bell. So how had my trusty bell failed me?
In thinking back to our last stop, I realized that I had not been the one who started the car. Elizabeth was just at that age when starting the car was still exciting. (My how things have changed!! Lol!) I had given her the keys to start the car while I paid the check. So the trusty bell did ding, but only for her ears. When I got behind the wheel, I did not check the gas gauge because I had complete faith that my car would tell me when it needed gas.
Stuck on the side of the road
What a mistake! How many times do we do the same things in life? We start out down a road without making adequate provision for how we are going to arrive at our destination. We may wind up on the side of the road, or stuck in the middle of a desert, or stranded in the middle of an intersection.
I could easily have avoided my disaster by filling the gas tank before I got on the road. But I was trusting in the wrong thing – my car. Lol! Those who have anxiety struggles already know that the struggle is coming – we just don’t know when.
For man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them. Ecclesiastes 9:12
The struggle ahead
God tells us to make preparations:
A prudent person foresees danger and takes precautions.
The simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences. Proverbs 22:3 NLT
So, how can we prepare for the struggle ahead so that we are not sidelined by it?
My experience has been that the plan itself is what is important. No, we are not planning to have attacks – we are planning to get beyond the attacks to a place where they no longer come. But to arrive at that place, we need a full tank of gas.
Floating through it
Way back when I was first trying to figure out how to deal with it all, I read a book called, “Hope and Help for Your Nerves”, by Dr. Claire Weekes. She said something to the effect of trying to float through the panic attacks. I learned that this was a great way to think of it. Trying to “fight” the attacks had only been making them worse. When I accepted the fact that the attack really was not going to kill me (and that is hard, right??), I learned to follow her advice and float through the attacks. That was the first lesson.
The next thing I learned was to have a mental “happy place”, that is a place you can think about that brings peace and contentment. If you don’t have one, come up with one. My place changes from time to time as I experience new places. It can be anything. For me and my love of the outdoors, it is always a place outside – the bank of a lake, a quiet place by a waterfall, a spot in the woods. It doesn’t even have to be a place that you have actually been to – just a place where you can mentally transport yourself to peace.
Worth the effort!
And the last thing is to make sure you have scripture ready to fill your thoughts. Pick a few verses that speak to your heart and commit them to memory. When I needed gas, I was not sitting in front of a gas pump. When you need God’s Word, you may not have a Bible in your hand.
So prepare for the journey ahead of you. When you reach the other side. You will know that it was worth the effort to get there!!
See you out there. 🙂
GUARD RAIL: Have a plan!
A prudent person foresees danger and takes precautions.
The simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences.
Proverbs 22:3 NLT