Pressure
“8:12 I can get home by 9:00,” I thought, as I left work…..okay I thought it almost every night for three months.
It usually followed by the following:
“It will end soon; it’s just a season.”
“You’ll get through this. You’re almost out of the hole.”
“You’ve got to balance your life better.”
“I’m drowning! I can’t see the light in this at all.”
“God, where are you?”
“I can’t do this anymore.”
“This has to end.”
(insert daily morning panic attacks here)
I’m sad to say, I’m not out of that hole and I’m still feeling the pressure. But I’m happy to say I’ve found Jesus in it all (again...and again...and again).
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It started January 2017 and lasted three months. I would wake up for work and just the thought of going there gave me a panic attack. I mean every single morning - gasping for air, holding back the vomit (sometimes not-so-successfully), spilling tears on my pillows.
I talked about some of the ways God wrecked my life last year - read more here.
But again the waves started crashing into my face, pushing me on the ground, and sucking me into the undertow.
And then I read a book by Priscilla Shirer called
Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific and Strategic Prayer. The title alone was enough to scare me away - “serious, specific, and strategic prayer.”
As I entered my war room (pun intended), I only had one plan...slip away from Satan’s hold.
The book tackles the 10 strategies women believe Satan uses against them. The first seven hit me hard, one right after the other. But then I opened to Chapter 8 - “Pressures:Reclaiming Peace, Rest, and Contentment.”
I have the introduction to the chapter pinned at my cubicle. It reads:
If I were your enemy, I’d make everything seem urgent, as if it’s all yours to handle. I’d bog down your calendar with so many expectations you couldn’t tell the difference between what’s important and what’s not. Going and doing, guilty for ever saying no, trying to control it all, but just being controlled by it all instead...If I could keep you busy enough, you’d be too overwhelmed to even realize how much work you’re actually saving me.
--Priscilla Shirer, Fervent
Five minutes before I opened to this page, I debated on if I had time for God-time. And now, I was frozen. Staring at the paragraph that called out everything I’d been battling for the past nine months. “...trying to control it all, but just being controlled by it all instead…”
My buddy Priscilla kept beating me over the head with the Word and the Truth. I’d let “Abide, Delight, and Dwell” fly out the window (read more here). But God spoke three simple words to me:
I am enough.
but He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you [My lovingkindness and My mercy are more than enough—always available—regardless of the situation]; for [My] power is being perfected [and is completed and shows itself most effectively] in [your] weakness.”...
--2 Corinthians 12:9 (AMP)
And then shortly after, He said:
Only I can give you rest.
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest…
--Matthew 11:28
At the end of every chapter, as you might have guessed by the title of the book, you evaluate your battle plan. You work through praise, repentance, asking, and saying “yes” to God. My battle plan is posted on my desk at work. Every 2 hours I have an alarm that goes off, I turn to that battle plan that reads like this:
A Prayer For Pressure
Lord, thank You for being enough. I’m sorry for continually allowing unrealistic expectations and unnecessary pressures to cover my need for “shabbat” [to rest]. Give me the “God-given ability” of discerning my limits and the “godly authority” to know when it’s Your voice I’m hearing. In You, I am no longer a slave to pressures and expectations. Amen.
