The Joy of the Lord is My Strength

Yesterday was an incredible day. It was perfect. All day I was in awe of the answered prayer about finding joy in my last weeks at my job. My patients were all great, one I have been taking care of for a couple months is actually going home this week after a long, hard recovery from a freak accident which makes my heart ache with happiness for him. The other two were special needs patients who were funny and sweet and loving. I got news about someone, a perfect stranger, who wanted more information on how to support me next year and hear about my monthly updates. On my drive after word The line from a worship song stuck out and it summed everything up perfectly... "The joy of the Lord is my strength" wow, never really appreciated that line until I actually felt like I was living it. LifeGroup was good, I look forward to that time so much and at the end we had a really good time of prayer which made me feel truly connected with the girls and God. This sounds corny (because it is) but I even had the kids song; I've got such joy joy joy joy down in my heart...where? down in my heart... where? going through my head, :P

I realized yesterday that my days leading up feeling sad about my upcoming departure were actually positive. Don't mistake the fact that I am ridiculously excited to go, it has just been getting more "real" recently that I am leaving. I was feeling sad about leaving a new group of friends who I feel I am just starting to get close to. I was sad about leaving an incredible job that I LOVE, and mostly I was sad about leaving my family. What I realized yesterday was if I wasn't leaving, I wouldn't appreciate what I have here nearly as much. My prayer request last night was that I can continue to cherish every moment spent with people I love while I am still here. I went to bed feeling great with plans of getting an early start to today and being productive.

This morning within hours I felt like a bomb had been dropped. At first I thought I had too much coffee, however you can never have too much coffee :) Seriously though...I had that jittery feeling and was overwhelmed by normal things and things unseen. This feeling is almost completely foreign to me. I never feel anxious. I can probably count on one hand the times I remember feeling true anxiety over something. There was no indicator as to why I felt this way...I just did. Nothing seemed to make it go away. I tried laying down, taking a shower, praying...still nothing. I went off to a meeting for work and listened to the CD I was talking about in my previous post. That combined with some yummy passion tea seemed to calm my nerves a little, but they still lingered. After verbally "barfing" on my friend :) about everything on my mind I decided to sit down with my bible and journal and go to town. I looked in the concordance, flipped right to anxiety, and went through all of the verses. The second to last reference was out of Philippians and just as I was about to look at the next one I felt the need to read through the whole book of Philippians.

The verse on anxiety is Philippians 4:6-7, however this is not the verse that stuck out to me the most. I was struck by verse that follows.
Phil. 4:8~
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

All day I never thought about anything lovely or excellent. I let anxiety take hold and instead of finding something good or praiseworthy to focus on I got wrapped up in feeling like crap. I think there are plenty of anxiety-causing factors bubbling underneath the surface for me. I felt like today was a picture as to what it could look like if I let myself be consumed by those things. I feel at total peace now. Part of me wanted to come home tonight and turn on the t.v. in order to numb my mind a bit. I am so happy I felt led to read and just sit in the quiet presence of God. In the beginning of the book of Philippians my application bible gives a breakdown of the book. This particular one talked about happiness vs. joy. I liked this quote "happiness comes from happenings, joy comes from Christ"

I need strength to get through each day, whether it be perfect day like yesterday or a not-so-perfect day like today. Its funny to me that today the line "the Joy of the Lord is my Strength" means a whole lot more to me than it did yesterday. Today it rings even more true (and I've got that joy joy joy joy down in my heart again :)