Breathe and Control

COVID-19 has gotten a grip on us all, but we need not give it the power of controlling emotions. Yes, I know many of you have either been affected by the nasty virus, or know someone whom has. And, to be honest, loss is a real thing. It is not easy to cope with. However, if presented to you in a different manner, I think you might seek to approach the hurt, pain, and uncertainty differently. What if I told you that you only have 86,400 seconds in a day? Would you alienate the seconds that you have left, with the people you love, in order to address the few that have brought, or are bringing, sorrow, hurt, pain, uncertainty?

I have had a verse in my mind since this whole thing started here in the US: 2 Timothy 1:7. It says, "For Christ did not give you a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-discipline" If we dig into this a little, it hits directly about the notion of allowing fear to consume/drive us. It tells us that fear is not from Christ (if you believe in spiritual warfare, that means it is from Satan). And, it teaches us to override fear/Satan with words like power, love, and self-discipline. This has long been a favorite verse of mine, because it has helped me to infiltrate the negative thoughts that used to consume my mind. You see, in focusing on the fact that we have the power within us to change, that love is the main ingredient on how to change, and that self-discipline is a close 2nd, we are given a perfect concoction for moving from fear, and into positivity.

In our house, we use many tools/methods to refocus our thoughts back on the positive. One of which is a simple breathing technique. I ask the kids to breathe in to their fullest capacity, and then to exhale to their fullest capacity. While I ask them to do it a total of 4 times, one can physically see the stress departing their body upon the first, second, and third exhales. If we let it/him, fear will over-run all our emotional capacity! And, that means that we will not have enough emotional bandwidth to lean into our best moments- the time/seconds that we have with our living relatives and friends.

As with any area of our life, we can turn a negative into a positive, we need only to use the internal power, with love and discipline as our tools, to overcome and do an about-face!