Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “anxiety”
I was afraid of the dark when I was a child. Truth is, I was afraid of the dark when I was a 21-year-old newlywed. That was a bit of surprise to my husband. I had both real and imaginary reasons to be afraid of the dark. Make believe monsters are scary enough. The real-life ones? Those are harder to …
@bethvogt This isn’t the blog post I’d originally written for today. Seven weeks have passed since my friend’s death by suicide. My sadness is sometimes a dull ache; at other times my heart breaks all over again. Last night I realized September is National Suicide Awareness Month, also known as Suicide Prevention Month. I couldn’t ignore the God-prompt to set …
@bethvogt A few weeks ago, I applied for long term health insurance. After all the ups and downs we’ve had with my mother-in-law’s care, my husband, Rob, and I want to do as much as we can to ease things in the future for our adult children. Last week, the company denied my application. Okay then. Then the real …
@bethvogt Life stopped abruptly for me last week, thanks to unrelenting muscle spasms in my jaw. Forget powering through the pain – sleeping was the wiser choice, curling up in my bed with either a heating pad or ice pack pressed to my face. Not how I planned to spend the week. Several days in, I was in bed – …
@bethvogt Let’s talk about the movie Mission: Impossible 3, shall we? No spoilers, I promise, although the movie released in 2006. My family’s been watching the Tom Cruise series and my son-in-love says the third movie is his favorite. I’m all for a good chase scene and you’re guaranteed at least one of those in an M: I movie, plus …
@bethvogt I worry about my mother-in-law every single day. I’m familiar with humorist Erma Bombeck’s assessment of worry: “Worry is like a rocking chair; it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere.” Still, I find myself rocking away day after day. Ruth – “MiMaw” to her four grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren – turns 102 years old in …
I stumbled across a new definition of stress the other day. Stress, according to author Richard Carlson, is a sprain to the soul. Yes, yes, it is. There’s no denying we’re all stressed right now about too many things. Carlson’s perspective reframed my understanding of the life we’re all living – stretched out of emotional proportion by the coronavirus pandemic, …
@bethvogt I struggled to write this blog post. For the better part of Tuesday, I thought I just wouldn’t write anything. The hours kept ticking away, and I kept tossing aside possible topics. And at ten o’clock Tuesday night I started typing words. Just how honest would I be? Life’s been hard the past few days – the kind of …
@bethvogt (With acknowledgement to Reinhold Neibuhr (1892-1971), who wrote the Serenity Prayer.) God grant me the serenity Help me to stay calm. To not yell at my family no matter how much longer we’re quarantined together or say out loud all the snarky comments I’m thinking, even if I do think they’re funny. to accept the things I cannot change …
I asked my friend, Casey, how she was doing with the extended stay-at-home order in Colorado Springs. “Hanging in there. Trusting God,” she said. “But limbo is a hard place to hang out in.” Yes, yes, it is. And that’s what’s wearing on all of us right now: we’re stuck in limbo, waiting for someone to set us free. The …
