5 Ways to Reduce Stress during Anxious Days

As I fed our little flock of sheep this morning, as I piled and fluffed the hay and they calmly chewed, as I carried the buckets of grain and our ewes and one fine ram ate and deeply drank,  I kept thinking of the ways of the Good Shepherd’s own little flock calmly lives into the spacious, non-anxious presence of God and these 5 gentle movements of grace to reduce stress during any anxious days: 

1. Walk: Walk out Whatever’s Tangling You Up:

Finding some quiet pastures, a bit of green, a tree or two, a trail under some leaves, some still waters –  is all a way to do more than what the Japanese call “forest bathing” by having what I call a  long “glory soak,” getting outside and soaking in the divine glory that fills the whole world, a way to cleanse the mind, breathe in deeply and move your body to move the stress through.

Practice a daily rhythm of a 30 minute walk outside a day and you decrease your risk of depression by 25% percent.

2. Word: Steeper the Mountain in Front of You, the More the need to Steep in His Word:

Open His Word, read the Psalms, linger in the Gospels, sit with the epistles. Write down one verse and steep in the truth of it, relax into the reliability of it, chew on His Words, savor their sustenance, ruminate on the certainty of His promises, retreat into the refuge of the Word Himself, the Author who is lovingkind and can do nothing less than write a kind and redemptive story.

Carry around one verse and memorize it, because what you know by heart is what your heart really knows.  And, even the research attests: the more you steep in His Word, the less stress you feel and the more strength you feel for any steep mountain. 

3. Give Thanks: Giving thanks gives you an edge on peace. 

The neural pathways of your mind are actually their own kind of digestive tract: feed your mind angst and you feel sick with worry. Nourish your mind on the good, the gifts, the gratitudes, and you have more than a good attitude – your whole mind, body and soul feel good. 

If Daniel, a man of prayer facing the lion’s den, kept praying three times a day with thanksgiving, just as he had always done, (Daniel 6:6) and Jonah in his distress, cried out with thanksgiving (Jonah 2:1-10), and Jesus faced his last dire hours at the Last Supper by taking what was given with grace and still giving thanks, and Paul offered the invitation to “not be anxious, but in everything, with prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God” (Phil. 4:6) – then can we do any better than to 

Slay all angst …with prayers of thanks

The neural pathways of your mind are actually their own kind of digestive tract: feed your mind angst and you feel sick with worry. 

Nourish your mind on the good, the gifts, the gratitudes, and you have more than a good attitude – your whole mind, body and soul feel good. 

Gratitude is the game changer that wins you more joy, less worry, and far more expansive trust because, just as you train your eyes to see the gifts of grace today, you’re training your heart to trust that there will be more than enough grace for the future. 

The practice of giving thanks is actually giving you the gift of greater joy and peace and trust. 

4. Bless: The best way to De-stress is to go Bless:

When we help others, we help our own hearts and all this hurting world… 

It’s counter-intuitive. Stressed? Go Bless. “Helping behavious buffer stress” is what researchers at Yale discovered, and research discovered that more than 2 acts of kindness a day results in dramatic increase in mental well-being.

Send a text to someone who sees the world differently than you, drop off a cup of coffee for someone who isn’t often noticed, slip an encouraging word and verse into someone’s mailbox, a love note to them for just being in the world.

Give your time, your resources, your encouragement, volunteer, show up, surprise someone, make that phone call. Reach across the aisle, the street, the back fence and lower your stress by being a blessing. Be the G.I.F.T. and Give it Forward Today.

When we help others, we help our own hearts and all this hurting world… 

5. Pray…

Because those who pray? Just 12 minutes a day – actually literally grow the cingulate cortex of your brain, that manages your feelings. And you grow your cortex, and you grow nicer and more gracious. Pray and you literally receive a new mind – the mind of Christ! 

Prayer isn’t the least we can do, and it isn’t all we can, but surely it is the most we can do… 

Pray the way He taught us to pray, pray it as the rhythm that your own heart beats to: 

“Thy Kingdom Come…”

No matter what unknown lies ahead at any point in time, that is what’s coming, that is what’s assured, that is how He taught us to pray: 

What’s coming up around the next corner is always His Kingdom coming

What’s coming is His Kingdom, 

whatever’s coming is always what’s been coming:

the sureness of His Kingdom that will outlast all kings, 

the goodness of a loving-kind God on His throne, 

the certainty that there is one real and forever Kingdom coming, 

being ushered in, even right now…

And no matter how things settle out, God is always setting all things genuinely right.

No matter what comes across our path, Christ already went to the Cross and the tomb is empty, so our peace is anything but empty… And no matter how things settle out, God is always setting all things genuinely right.

No matter what comes across our path, Christ already went to the Cross and the tomb is empty, so our peace is anything but empty…

because  there is a Kingdom coming

where love and truth, 

grace and gentleness, mercy and holiness, strength and compassion, reign 

and His Upside Down Kingdom 

upends

all that is wrong 

and ushers in the relief of the wholeness and completeness of 

the shalom of God 

without end. 

And so He taught us all to pray, on every single one of our anxious days, praying for an otherworldly holy, cruciform love, on earth as it is in heaven: 

Thy Kingdom come… 

And after I finish feeding our little flock, and they all come, just simply come close… I quietly pray and reach out to touch gently touch the little lambs, and we all rest in the safety of sure grace.

Live into the Spacious, Non-Anxious Presence of God

When life feels anxious, give yourself the gift of more God & less stress, and a daily, beautiful retreat with: SACRED Prayer: 90 Days into Deeper Intimacy with God and Gifts and Gifts and Gratitudes: A Gratitude Journal for a Year of One Thousand Gifts