Easily Excitable

I’ve had a lot of great coaches in my life: they’ve been great mentors and role models for me. 

Now, after coaching for three years a while back, I can see all the energy and time they invested in me (with very little returns!).

When I first started playing middle school softball, we had a coach named Janice Bryan.

Her daughter is a year older than me, so I was fortunate to be around Coach Bryan often. 

She was our middle school coach, helped out with our travel ball team, and later became our high school head coach, as well. 

I adored this woman and looked up to her. She was really good at handling and guiding a group of feral teenage girls from their early teens to young adulthood.

It’s not nearly as easy as it looks. And it doesn’t look easy in the first place.  

Coach Bryan had high expectations for me, and I love her still for that. 

She was also a great 7th grade Life Science teacher.

But something that Coach Bryan would always do is this: 

When she was coaching third base and needed to talk to you, she would call time out and walk up to you with her sunglasses pulled down and perched on the bridge of her nose. 

She’d look at you over her sunglasses while simultaneously grabbing your facemask and pulling you in so that you’d be locked in to whatever she had to say. 

This was hallmark Coach Bryan. 

I’m not a teenager now-

Which means I don’t get pulled in by my face mask anymore. 

Kinda hate that I don’t, really: being told what to do when I was younger sure made things a lot easier. 

Now, though, I have to have those chats with my own self.

I have to grab my own face mask and have a chat with me that normally lands somewhere in the neighborhood of, “Listen up, you idiot: get it together.” 

I don’t have quite the grace and patience with me that Coach Bryan had. 

Talking ourselves through a situation is probably something we’ve all had to do

Personally, my internal dialogue is what helps me sort out things so I don’t go into a tailspin. I need me to talk me down from the ledge sometimes. 

Now, for the most part, I’ve never really been given to anxiety:

I can compartmentalize well enough to where I can shut down or outright ignore that. 

And, yes, I do realize this probably isn’t the healthiest habit.

Now, fear, stress, doubt, tragedy, confusion, discontentment, dissatisfaction, anger- those are a different story. 

Sometimes, I can get into a little bit of a ‘mental spiraling out.’ I tried this week to walk through- specifically- how I talk to myself and think in order to step out of that spiral.

What are some different phrases that have helped me deal with the situation at hand or get back in alignment?

The following phrases are what I came up with. 

And because I love a pattern, 

all of these have five words.

Here are some of the reminders I have to talk myself through when I get into a bit of a mental rut or mess:

1. Stay in Your Own Lane

If there were even a Pharisaical habit I can be guilty of, it’s this one.

The Bible says love thy neighbor as yourself. It never said mind thy neighbor as thyself.  

Looking over at the other lane makes you more likely to inadvertently edge over into it, and the extreme consequence of that is simple: it’s a head-on collision. 

In 2 Thessalonians, Paul has a bit to say about busybodies- those who might make others’ business their own. 

If I have time to mind others’ business, it must be that I am…

a. Not busy enough with my own stuff or 

b. Ignoring my own stuff.

That might be where some anxiety comes from: spreading my considerations too thin OR failing to tend to my own and playing catch up. 

Alas, social media has given us ALL the ability to be busybodies.

2. It’s Above My Pay Grade 

My job is simple (though not easy): my job is to say yes. 

That’s it. 

Knowing the why or how behind whatever God is pulling me into? 

Quite honestly, that’s none of my business. When I’m feeling fear, it can be a natural inclination to want to claw and grab at a role that isn’t mine. 

In the clearest terms, it’s simple: I want to be God rather than trust God. 

I need to be okay with the fact that He knows the whole story, picture, and situation in Hi-Res: He knows what will happen because He wrote the script Himself. 

If I am anxious or worried, I need to remember this: God’s promise is that He is in the unknown and has already handled the details.

3. It is Good to Remember 

I would do well to spend a little more time on Memory Lane. 

If I am wrapped up in fear, tripping on stress, controlled by anxiety, or blinded by grief, the most immediate response is to focus on the need at hand. 

But, really, what might be more beneficial is to focus on the past ways God has worked.  

Example: I don’t worry about a whole lot, but money can be one thing on that list.

I am a saver by nature (probably because I can remember bits and pieces of the housing market crash of 2008), and I can react in fear when money is involved. 

Once, at the end of the year, we got an extra paycheck from work. With this extra money, I was able to pay for some graduate classes without taking out another loan. 

The next year, we got a bonus, and I was able to pay for my wisdom teeth to be taken out without touching my savings.

God provides.

Because of His perfect track record, I trust God: I have faith that He will work out the budget for the following month. 

My job is just to give Him a tithe. He’ll work out the details.  

That remembering His faithfulness is key to faithfully and courageously setting one foot in front of the other. 

4. What should I learn here? 

When I’m going through something difficult, I try to make this one of the first questions I ask God.

After the initial shock has been experienced, and I’ve checked myself to make sure I still have all my limbs, this is how I’ve tried to train myself to think. 

Dealing with difficult teenagers; struggling with motivation; marriage arguments; when I’m struggling with anger; when we found out Daddy had cancer: when things get hard, I try to remember to push this question upward, 

This has been transformative. It pulls my focus from the thing right in front of me and points it upward.

Personally, I can’t think of God as only teaching me through Bible stories. I have to take and apply that information when I’m given the opportunity to do so.

Jesus was a teacher, and the best education comes from practice. 

5. It’s best I don’t know. 

I think if God showed us the whole picture, we wouldn’t have the courage to get out of bed. 

I might think I want to know what’s next, but I lack the muscles and the character to deal with what’s coming. 

(Also, sidenote: it’s also great advice for social interactions, too- both for teenagers and for us adults, too.

Think people are talking about you? Well, really, you don’t know what they said or if they said anything at all. So, really, who cares?? Ignorance is bliss!)

If we don’t know something, it’s (most of the time) for the best. 

We see dimly, and one day, when we have the ability and context to handle it, we’ll get that eternal sight to see it all clearly. 

6. Remember the fruit He’s growing 

A bolstering thing to remember about hard times is that God doesn’t let them go to waste. He redeems every situation. 

There is no suffering wasted with God. 

We can believe and trust that He is growing fruit in the times where we want to pull our hair out- or those moments that legitimately feel like ‘this thing’ might just kill us. 

This doesn’t make tragedy any less painful, but it is comforting to know He is purposeful in all that He does. 

7. This is going to pass. 

This might be a little cliche, but with good reason: we are short-sighted folks.

We don’t do well looking beyond what is right in front of us. 

Case in point: Trey got the flu a few weeks ago. 

I am a mediocre nurse at best. I have about three days of mediocrity saved up before I turn into the worst caretaker around. 

Additionally? He is not a fun patient. 

He ended up hurting his back, so that even after the flu symptoms went away, he was in pain. I know he had to be thinking the same thing that was in my mind, but that both of us were thinking: 

What if that pain DOESN’T go away? 

Luckily, it did, which is a good thing to remember as a general rule: 

Everything will pass over, be it the good or bad things. 

May that spur me to enjoy the good times because I know they will end, and may I have hope in the awful times that the cloud will pass. 

And restoration awaits after. 

8. If He dresses the lilies 

On the hardest day of my life, I had this line stuck in my head. 

It was a day that everything seemed to change in an instant. This is (obvs) from the Bible, but this is also one of my favorite parts of the song, “Jireh,” by Maverick City. 

Naomi Raine’s voice was echoing through my head throughout that whole afternoon.

I like to think this was a spiritual moment, because never before in my life has a song ever stayed repeatedly in my head (save, maybe, for “White Winter Hymnal” by the Fleet Foxes- not a spiritual song, just an annoying one) for such a long period of time.

The verse in the song, taken from Matthew 6:28-30 is such: 

“If He dresses the lilies with beauty and splendor, how much more will He clothe you?”

He’s a big God who is quite adept at handling both our messiness and the overall messiness of life. 

He is the God who not only paints the tulips bright red, but He’s the One who created red in the first place. 

And, come to think of it, the tulip, too. 

9. I can trust my Father

For Lent, I’ve begun reading through the Sermon on the Mount. Something I realized this year was how many times Jesus says ‘your Father.’

My dad (who just celebrated his 36th*** birthday this past week) is a legend. He is a moral, good, faithful, honorable man who loves his family ferociously. 

He adores kids, and he has over-valued me since the day I was born. 

He’s generous and funny. 

He set the standard for the man I would marry, and he has been a glowing, although (of course) imperfect, representation of who my Heavenly Father is.  

How lucky am I that I have an earthly father who is steady and trustworthy. I have never once had a moment where I really wondered if he was doing what was best for me. 

That is only a whisper of the heart God the Father has for us.

And so, if I really believe my heavenly Father to be all that He says He is: 

• Perfect with good plans for me
• Without fault
• Holy
• Sovereign

Then, I can trust that His love for me is perfect- that He will protect me from both the seen and unseen enemies, and that- yes- His discipline is perfectly applied and perfectly needed. 

Sometimes, things can get messy in our heads

Talking to myself? It might not be the worst idea.

Thank God for good coaches who grab our face masks.