Mental Overload: Is there a fix?

Another one of those days. You know the kind I am talking about. From the moment you wake up things begin to go wrong. You are still carrying the baggage from yesterday that had unresolved issues. As the day wears on more stuff gets added. Trying to keep everything in perspective and under control is getting harder and harder to do. You are not sleeping well and your eating habits are changing. Even your body feels the impact from all this mental stress as the immune system goes into overtime trying to resist the current virus circulating around. You have trouble relating to those you love and become irritable and short on patience which adds more issues to your already overloaded mind. If not resolved you can expect the red flags to start popping up; headaches or maybe chest pains. What is a body to do?!

About now you are expecting me to tell you just to turn it all over to the Lord. That is what most preachers do, right? That is easy for me to tell you to do but I know from experience that it takes more than that. Because I have turned a lot of stuff over to Him but it never left me for some reason! I have tried to leave things at the altar but somehow they are still with me when I get home. Then some would say, "Well, you really didn't turn it all over to Him." I have tried. I have tried to walk away from it and promised myself to let Jesus worry about it. Guess what? Yeah, still had it. I have prayed and handed it all over to Him as much as was possible on my part; but it never left. Therefore I knew there had to be fix, a fix that I had not found.

Philippians, Chapter 4

Then one day during a devotional reading in my study I came across this verse written by Paul the Apostle: Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! ⁵ Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. ⁶ Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. ⁷ And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Paul went through a lot. Risking his life daily to tell people about Jesus. For him to say this must have had a great impact on his life. Then I read this verse a little farther down in the text: I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. ¹³ I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

Ah, there it is! There is the fix Paul found. It was not giving his troubles to the Lord. It was learning, yes learning, to live with them. I realized that even though all these things were upon me, they had not killed me! Christ had kept them from crushing me! I then began praying different. Instead of praying and asking the Lord to take all the things I asked Him to keep me strong as I worked through them. Today, I still have unresolved things going on that I would like to have complete fixes for but I have learned, as Paul did, to keep my focus on serving Christ and not fixing the problems. When I do that, the problems do not go away, but they sure look a lot more solvable!