Tariffs. Bird Flu. Ragebait. Clickbait. Speculation. Social Media. Everyone has an opinion. Eggs. But you’re telling me no one has a solution? Anger. Tears. Can no one else see the Ha Satan clearly?
Closures. Monopolies. Let’s spiral. Small business. Big business. DOGE. AI. Algorithm, subscription fatigue. The death of personal style. Kindle downloads. Call BookTok, this 1984. The world is full of NPCs. Could you wake up from your main character energy?
Quiet the voices speaking lacking wisdom. Who knows no good deed. I’ve had enough. Power. Riches. They are for fools. Feel a calling, verses come into focus. So perfectly timed. Elohim. YHWH. Passing over. Lent is upon us. Cling to truth.
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
A year ago, I started drawing geese. The Canada goose specifically. They’re a special bird to me.
I see them everywhere – on our walks on Bailey Trail, at the pond in town, flying over our house, on the side of the road, flying over the parking lot in Erie, and hanging out in the Lemur pond at Keystone Safari. They are my comfort animal, a reminder for me that I’m not alone.
God’s used them as a reminder of His promises in my life.
This is a sketch I did to practice the posture of the goose on land. Their necks, their postures, and the way their wings look have a completely different view from land to sky to water.
I usually rush through my drawings, but today I studied the example photo before I jumped in. I also used a technique I learned as a kid to use circles to mark the lines of the body.
As I mentioned in The Rewards and Scars of Setting Healthy Boundaries, I am on a journey to let go of the cortisol and tension I have unknowingly stored in my body. I didn’t realize I was doing this, possibly for decades now, because I don’t feel my feelings I bury them, which I’m working on. The only time I think I wasn’t doing this was during my sophomore and junior years in college when I was doing yoga practice, deep breathing, and trying to get to know myself. Which sounds odd, but was a great way to get through a broken heart.
Emotional Unintelligence
The hows and whys of the broken heart are a bit complicated but I was muddling through the after-effects of a situation ship. Why a situation ship? Well, I believe I was doing anything and everything to feel something, because I buried the heartbreak I felt at the end of high school, realizing my dad had missed my entire childhood and turning 18 meant that child support, the only string connecting us was severed. I didn’t know where he was and if I would see him again. It turns out I did see him again and would be moving to the same town as him five years later, another story for another day. Life is wild.
Anyways, coming out of high school the weight of that broken heart was so much I didn’t know what to do with it. There was so much emotion, so much tension and confusion, in my mind and body that I didn’t understand so my brain freaked out and gave me my first taste of anxiety, depression, and panic. It was a lot. During this time I also lost my ability to cry. I went totally numb which was unnerving, but at the time I was happy at least I wasn’t overwhelmed by my emotions anymore. The downside was that I felt nothing.
I’m Chuck Bass
I didn’t like that. I’m a highly sensitive person, an artistic soul, and feeling is how I understand the world around me. I wanted to feel like myself again. Here’s where the mess began – I decided to go into dating in college in this incredibly unhealthy mindset. These casual relationships were doomed from the start. It couldn’t grow into something real because I wasn’t emotionally available. Which opened the door for the worst relationship type in my opinion the situationship. It was the exact opposite of what my personality needs or wants but hey, I couldn’t feel anything so how hurt could I get?
Blown Up Life
Yeah, this blew up in my face. Once I came out of this situationship and this time of emotional numbness, I realized that I had completely blown up my life. Close relationships that I had from high school were not there. I had not invested in good friendships and community in my college life either by not seeking it out or ditching out on friends who could have been healthy supportive people, because I was scared of these friendships. It was a mess. I was so lonely. I had to get to know myself because there was no one else. I also didn’t know myself anymore. Who was this numb person I had been? Who is this new person who feels, but also feels lost and lonely?
There was so much I needed to understand about myself before I could be a good friend again or try dating once more. I didn’t know where I was going, or who I wanted to be as an adult. There was so much change in a short time. It was time to pause, slow down, and spend time doing the work to find this new person within the closed-off shell.
Meeting A Healthier Me
During this time I became independent for the time. I started going to the coffee shop by myself and learned to be okay on my own, which was wild. This is a skill I’ve forgotten how to do. I let myself be alone with my thoughts, it was a rough road to get there. This time alone started with a season of insomnia, where there was no choice but to be by myself, and now I realize spent time alone with God even though I wasn’t focused on this at the time. I discovered new shows like Fruits Basket, Trigun, Firefly, and Vikings. I also began thinking seriously about what I wanted in life with this new scenario. I didn’t end up going to fashion school or doing the Fashion Business major I was supposed to create with my advisor. I found myself drawn to fashion history through the creative sandbox of one cool professor who gave us the freedom to explore our interests.
I also started doing yoga and learning to train my mind and my breathing to keep going when my body and mind were tangled up in knots from the stress and trauma of life. It was the first time I think I was doing exercise for exercise itself not for a job like paint crew or campus mail delivery for the mailroom, which were both pretty physical. My campus was old and full of hills and stairs, so many stairs.
2020s Version of Numb
As life goes on, things repeat. Life changed again and I got busy. I stopped practicing these healthy habits into post-grad and getting married which was dumb on my part. I got healthier but I don’t think I got wiser. So I find myself now relearning how to find healthy balance and healthy habits to rid myself of the tension and wild mind that has trapped me in a prison of my own making.
How do I find my way out? My plan is to reflect and discuss that process here as I go through this journey of self-discovery again because I think this is something we all face and I wish I had known more about emotional health when I was younger. There are a lot of things that kept that from being something I understood. We don’t always have the most emotionally mature parents and I think it’s hard to talk about. I hope you’ll join me on this little adventure.
When I was a kid and honestly, into adulthood, I thought studying the Bible and understanding the entire story, the nooks and crannies of the book that get skipped over, well I thought it was a lot of busy work that I wanted no part of. Especially after those four years of academia, no thanks.
But then I saw people in my life, who did spend all that time being consistent in the Word have much less stress and worry, despite stressful and difficult things. It didn’t make sense to me. I just thought they were more mature than me or could handle life better, as each stress and challenge KO-ed me into a tailspin of anxiety. Maybe they were lucky? Tougher?
They might be, but honestly, since I decided to try their method and read the entire Bible from 2020-2021, I felt like I had a new well of examples to draw on when life got hairy. A reminder of God’s promises to think about instead of comparing my circumstances to others and questioning why this bad lot was happening to me. It sparked the faith and hope for a tomorrow that sustained me through the past two months.
It wasn’t an instantaneous change. I didn’t realize I had made progress until I put work in. Like with everything in life, building faith, learning to hope, and having a scriptural reminder to lean on during the tough days took effort and consistency. Like a workout plan, a garden, language learning, etc. It all takes time and practice. I think that is why there is such an emphasis on perseverance and courage in the Bible because in those moments that test us faith, hope, and peace arrive because you have taken the time to immerse yourself in the manner in which God does things.
It’s motivation in the chaos when nothing makes sense and even you are second-guessing your own choices. For example, the eclipse, which I mentioned before I wasn’t a fan of, but in the moment of the totality, unless you have the knowledge of astronomy to understand that the sun isn’t actually disappearing, it just appears blocked because of the orbit of the earth around the sun perfectly lining up with the orbit of the moon at the right time. Although I knew that was happening, the eerie feeling of the sun ceasing to shine in the middle of the day was bizarre! I knew it would come back and the eclipse would only last a few minutes, there was that little voice in the back of my head that was whispering doubt that everything wouldn’t be okay and the sun would get lost back there, maybe take a wrong turn.
That little voice of doubt lives in all of us. It comes out at the most inconvenient times! It has arrived and set up camp in my head through this whole house debacle. Through all the chaos, I was spending time in prayer but I was struggling to find time to sit down with God’s word and find new motivation. As a believer, reading the Bible is a source of refreshment, it feels like listening to a song which amps you up, I also do that too. (My current favorite is WORK by Ateez). I was worried through all the chaos that not spending time in God’s word would lead to me running out of gas and losing my heart to carry on.
In a recent post, I spoke to where I’ve been but all the chaos of our landlord’s decision to sell the house we lived in and offer us a sketchy deal on it was just the half of it, as we were looking for peace from her lack of boundaries and decorum, we were also looking for a new place to live. There were days when my landlord would dump a whole bunch of stress on my shoulders and then personally the details for our new house would throw down hurdles of chaos. Endless paperwork, the possibility of it not being possible at all, and having to find a new plan, it was a lot and I was surprised in those moments how scripture passages of encouragement from Psalms and Proverbs or stories of struggle by real people in the Bible would find their way into my mind. It would reinvigorate my drive to keep going. It kept me from quitting in frustration.
As a kid, things with my dad leaving us at an early age reinforced this narrative in my head that I didn’t deserve happiness or that the other shoe would always drop. Even though God provided a better life than I would have ever had with my narcissistic and verbally abusive dad, instead of focusing on the good, my brain has fixed on the bad. I have given up on so many hard things in life because I hit a bump in the road and just thought it was what I deserved. It sounds so silly to say it out loud. By digging into the Word over the past four years, that time of study has assisted me in pushing that voice down, in order to reframe what God has in store for me.
Things will probably get bad, over and over again. This world is fallen and can really suck sometimes. There will be jerks but there will also be good people. In life there will be times of joy and sadness, there will also be times of hardship. One setback is just a setback, not a lifestyle. I wish I had pursued studying the Bible sooner because I think there was a lot of peace available in my life that I refused to acknowledge. I did it the hard way, alone. It didn’t need to be like that.
Even if you are not a person of faith, I hope this encourages you to prioritize your mental health so that you will have a deep well to draw from on those hard days. You are not alone. I think you are awesome. ❤
In the United States, April 15th is our tax deadline. This is a date for me that has a lot of uncertainty. For most of my adult working life I have been a contractor which means your taxes are not taken out by your employer but instead you are responsible for setting aside the money in your savings that is paid out in a lump sum at the tax deadline. Now even though my job has changed, my husband and I are still navigating this setup and it has given us some uncertainty about how things are going to work moving forward in life, like how one saves for a down payment for a house when we aren’t sure how much we will be paying in taxes at the end of year, because our tax rates and tax laws seem to be shifting. It did this year for sure!
We were unaware that the laws had changed for all contractors, not just content creators, etc that you have to pay quarterly. I’m not sure how we were supposed to know to be honest because no information was shared although they advertise the tax deadline and tax services heavily from December to the deadline the next year. It’s been a stinging mistake because we learned there was a hefty penalty and a brand new tax rate that we were placed into, that we will not soon forget.
I think as humans, those big structures looming over us, like the government, cause a lot of anxiety in us because we want to believe that the social contract of Rousseau is what we are getting, but sometimes in those confusing moments like new laws and penalties without proper communication about it, it feels worrying. It took a lot of maturity and prayer this weekend to just accept that my frustration at myself and the lack of transparency was out of my control and that was okay. Like letting sand fall from my hands. As we paid our taxes for 2023 and then also unexpectedly had to pay for 2024’s first quarter, I had to accept that the money that felt like security was no longer mine, it was Caesar’s, and that’s the only answer.
And they sent to him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians, to trap him in his talk. And they came and said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about anyone’s opinion. For you are not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? Should we pay them, or should we not?” But, knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, “Why put me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” And they brought one. And he said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They said to him, “Caesar’s.” Jesus said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they marveled at him.
Mark 12:13-17 ESV
The timing sucked and the surprise of paying both 2023 and the first quarter of 2024 in this economy felt like a bit of a free fall. I mean in life, I don’t love surprises. The good ones for sure are fun but those bad surprises can hang over us like a cloud and that’s what I didn’t want to have hanging over me. My husband’s birthday is coming up, and there are charities we support that I don’t want to let down. I’d like to continue dreaming about future plans, have extra money to be generous if someone needs help, or just not be worried about finances. To have that feeling of serenity in the changing sea of life.
Two promises repeated in my mind as we made our payments that helped me regain my peace, which honestly made no sense aside from God and his peace that surpasses all understanding.
“And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.”
Romans 8:28 NLT
Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?
Matthew 6:26-30 NIV
I started thinking about the jokes people made on the day of the eclipse about going back to 2017, and where I was in 2017 with less than 100 USD to my name and no stable living situation, looking for a job as a new college grad and newlywed. It felt like my life was spiraling but then a year later I was stable with a job and a new life in Savannah. I think back to April 2020, newly laid off and with my husband’s employer looking at a complete NHL shutdown, none of it made sense, we just got back to normal and a savings, were we going back to square one three years later? And now in April 2024, I felt those same fears bubbling up.
Were we going back to that scary place? Was the rug pulled out from under me? How was God going to work this all for good? It’s funny to me now that this is the perspective I chose to focus on instead of thinking about how quickly God turns things around. In 2017, I went from rock bottom to a stable job and was ready for a big move in less than a year. In 2020, less than a year later, we were in a better situation than we left. If a big change happens, I need to remember to leave room for God to work instead of shutting down in fear and worry.
I find it to be no coincidence that I read a commentary days before that discussed the promise God makes in Romans 8:28. He works everything together for good, but He doesn’t promise it will make sense at the time, that’s where faith and leaning on His promises come in. We either choose to trust or we don’t, just like how we face trust issues with human relationships, we either trust people or we don’t. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but it’s honest.
As the dust settled and we processed the tax situation, I realized that although the way things happened didn’t make sense as it was happening, it was going to transform our future for the good. I will never again have to dread that lump sum at the end of the year. With quarterly taxes, it’s manageable chunks, which will help us figure out a down payment for a house and what I experienced this time will never happen again. This was it and now I’m free. I also remembered that after these big financial “losses” happen God does something amazing with the smaller amount in ways that only He can. It’s happened over and over in these years since 2017.
Giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s and God what is God’s is also an important part of this process. Giving back what God has given us to serve His kingdom according to what Jesus says in Matthew 25 and remembering His promise in Matthew 6 is how we plan for the future, on His promises. Being greedy and being unwilling to share my blessings with others is a one-way street to unhappiness. So how will this all play out? I don’t know yet but I do know it helped me find peace in this moment of uncertainty and being released from the dread of tax season is the answer to my prayers even though the process wasn’t how I would have chosen it to be, it will be okay.
For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
Matthew 25:35-40 NIV
I hope that by sharing this story, of my worries and my journey to peace that I will encourage you, reader in whatever you are facing right now. Life is such a rollercoaster and it is tricky in the tough days to remember it will get better. There will be brighter days. Financial stress is a tough adversary and I am still working through how to keep calm when it feels overwhelming.
Just remember you got this! 💪 Or in K-Pop speak, fighting!
One Rabbit Riot 