Stressed In

The first time I heard the phrase, "I'm stressed out" was from a preschool director in the late 80s.  Her stress came, not from overwhelming failure but from overwhelming success.  The school she had helped to start was beginning to outgrow staffing and facilities.  It was a good problem to have but it was stressful

We tend to think of stress as a negative thing, weighing down on us, causing us harm.  It is identified as a leading cause of heart disease and can preempt depression.  Because stress is so stressful on the body, mind and soul, we look for ways to deflate it.  However, when your stress comes on the heels of success, how do you deflate it?  When that promotion adds extra responsibility, how do you deflate that?  When that love child finally arrives, how do you deflate him/her?  When you finally get accepted to graduate school...?

Success causes stress.  And, unlike unwanted pressures like an IRS audit, loss of employment, chronic illness, etc., the stress you get from success is a good thing, which can propell you forward.  But, it is still stress and as such, it can quickly move from healthy stress to disabling distress.  Negative stress is by nature distressful and the need to deflate it is very important - you need to deflate the IRS problem, you need to undo the unemployment, you need to seek medical care for the chronic illness, etc.  But why would you want to deflate the stress of success?

Rather than deflate successful stress, you need to inflate you faith in God's power to give you resources and reserves to meet it and use it to move you forward.  That promotion is going to carry more responsiblity, that baby is going to need lots of attention, graduate school going to demand a  lot from you - you don't want to take away that stress for it would me giving up the object of your desire that brought you the stress.  You want to meet it, you just shouldn't meet it alone.  Lean in on Jesus, accepting his offer to "take his yoke and learn from him and receive rest from him" (cf. Matt 11:28).  "Humble yourself before God, casting your anxiety on him" (cf. 1 Pet 5:6-7).  You can "do all things through Him who gives you strength" (Phil 4:13).

Deflate negative stress.  Attack it, treat it, deal with it, dismiss it as quickly as you possibly can.  But embrace positive stress, inflating your faith in God, rise up to the occassion by accepting the Lord's power to lift you up: "Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time" (1 Pet 5:6).  Rather than be stressed out on a limb by yourself, get stressed in to a deeper and closer relationship with Jesus.   Jus' Say'n.