“Don’t lose your footing. Find your place of strength. Take time to identify those things that anchor your soul.”  —   Dr. Cindy Trimm

Often life goes full speed ahead – with or without you.  You can be so wrapped up in keeping up you don’t take the time to renew yourself.  Then, before you know it, out of the seemingly blue, you hit a wall and find yourself dazed and confused about how you got there.  You know you have gotten off track…  You know you aren’t yourself.  You know you’ve been missing you for a while.  You know that wall really didn’t just show up out of nowhere, you felt it coming but just didn’t stop yourself from walking into it.  You told yourself to “fake it till you make it;” which worked for a while – till the residue from the build-up of not taking a rest became so thick visibility was lost…

Now you’re at that wall, face in or butt down, and you’ve got to pull yourself back together again, got to find your place of strength…  You’re so far away from yourself, your normal avenues to renew and press just haven’t been working (to be honest, you haven’t been using them, hence the residue build-up).  What do you do?  How do you get your feet back on solid ground and get back to you?  How do you find a place of strength that will help you right here, right now?

I have a favorite passage of scripture, from Jeremiah that was ringing in my head as I found myself getting up off the ground recently:

¹⁶ Thus says the Lord: “Stand in the ways and see,
And ask for the old paths, where the good way is, And walk in it;
Then you will find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not listen.’

Jeremiah 6:16   New King James Version (NKJV)

This verse – taken completely out of the context of the story in Jeremiah but completely in context for me because I was not paying attention to how far away I was getting from my stress releasing regiments  – helped me get back to me.  I had been ignoring my own warning flags – my failsafe anchors that keep me from losing my footing.  I wasn’t taking time to read things that feed my soul, that recharge me and encourage me.  I wasn’t getting out in nature to simply enjoy the air and growing things or checking on/hooking up with family and friends…all the things that seem like nothing special but are…

A place of strength is where you go to find renewal, redemption, and hope…  It is a right now place…

The first thing I did to get back to there was pray.  Not my regular prayers I had been praying everyday for myself but the “can we talk” prayer where I pulled out by backstory, looked at the character traits, and examined the plot.  Repented.  Where did I veer from the natural flow of things?  Where did I lose my footing?  Examined myself with unabridged honesty.  Truth does set you free; it allows you to reset your pace and rewrite…  It allows you to get back to you no matter how far away you think you have gotten…

My place of strength is staying connected to me, to God, and to my backstory that informs the plot points in my life – plot points that can change if needed…