There are seasons of life that are just harder than others. They are tougher to navigate, the path is unclear, and vision can become obstructed. Pressures and responsibilities become heavy like weighted blocks are being carried on the shoulders and more are coming each day. The way you use to run with wild abandon is no more, now there is a trudging through muddy swamp like areas. The anticipation of things to come was so exciting but the realization of those things and the waiting has been just about enough to kill the hope. What use to feel like pure joy now feels like you might not make it. This reminds me of a scene in The Never Ending Story where Atreyu and Artax the horse are in the swamp of sadness. Atreyu tries to encourage him to fight against the sadness. Atreyu tells Artax that he has to care but it is too much for Artax and he dies in sinking muck.

In this kind of season, it is easy to become susceptible to our weaknesses and allowing them to take over our hearts, minds, and attitudes when we can not see, hear, or find our way. I often find myself dreaming of being somewhere else. I distract myself with anything other than what usually excited my passions. I become highly critical of myself because I am not acting out of my best self. I see the cracks in everything. I let the ice queen out of the basement of my soul and she is highly irritable and dislikes everything. Driver on the road are terrible, nothing is correct and right, things that use to be beautiful become bland. That is when I need a hard reset spiritually, emotionally, physically, mentally.

Every once in a while you need to reboot your computer and every once in a while you have to do that with yourself. How I do a hard reset:

• Changing up the way I spend time with the Lord: For me if I find myself just reading the word and praying just so that I can check off the box that it is done then I will switch it up and reengage.
• Spend time with people that I really love: For me that is my family outside around a campfire, going for a walk, eating food, and enjoying face to face time with them.
• Stop doing self imposed tasks of obligation: For me that is things I started doing out of joy but have become drudgery and harsh task master. These are not things the Lord asked of me. Just things I didn’t stop doing when the joy of doing them left.
• Stop over-functioning: For me these are things that I feel a responsibility to do because I feel like they wont get done. It causes a lot of stress and these are things that were never mine to take care of.
• Disconnect from social media and my phone as much as possible: For me that means not posting like a regimented army officer. It also means I hard limit the time I will be on social media. I may post here and there since I use my social media as a memory board.

How do you do a hard reset when you have felt this way?

All is grace,

Starla