I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once.                                                                                                                                   Jennifer Lane

You know the feeling.   

Here’s the thing about being in the healthy-family-legacy-building business: we’re in it for the long haul. In that moment of screaming toddler, chiming doorbell and “Say what you need to say” cell phone ring (seriously?), or financial uh-ohs, or a teenager on your laaast nerve, or one more restriction imposed because of a worldwide pandemic, we all may tend to extreme anxiety.

 Ah, but don’t.

That moment, this season is not forever. It feels like it when we’re standing there gobsmacked by life. Patience a distant memory. Exhausted or sad or angry or terribly disappointed.

Recently a friend of mine was handed a note by her irate 9 year old daughter after a sibling feud: 

Admit it. You’ve probably felt like writing your own kind of Zoe note sometime in the past few weeks. Although instead of going to your room you may want to run screaming from the house where you’ve been AND BEEN AND BEEN.

But between the crisis and our response is a piece of time  –  and God is found there. “Emotions,” Christian psychologist Marilyn Meberg, says, “don’t have brains.” God’s presence called into any situation provides buffers of wisdom and clarity and comfort that will help us make that one good decision and get us through the next moment and the next. And the next. Look to Him first:                                                                                                                     

• before the verbal explosion        
• or angry text
• or emotional meltdown
  
  

       Got it? Annabelle

Trust me: wisdom, clarity, and comfort are way better than falling into a black hole of despair or cleaning up a mess created while riding high on brainless emotion.

Here is a favorite scripture of mine and I pray it often (personalized):

As the eyes of a servant look to the hand of his master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so my eyes look to the Lord my God, until He has mercy on me. Psalm 123:2

He will. Model this for your kids. And your own well-being

What is your favorite go-to scripture in a challenging moment – or this challenging season?