I don’t know about you guys, but this summer ended way too fast! I was having a blast making my own routines and spending time with the people I love, so school starting was definitely weird for me. Even though I’m a junior, the beginning of every school year is always filled with a little bit of fear, because you’re heading into a whole new season of your life. For me, I get worried because I know that the year will be filled with challenges, but I have no idea what they will be. I guess you could call it a fear of the unknown. I’m such a planner kind of person, and knowing what my day is going to look like makes me feel so much better. So, when I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, I tend to get worried. I learned recently that this means I am not trusting God with my future, so it’s been personally convicting to me.
As the days were counting down to the start of the year, I realized that I had a lot of fear about school that I was continually pushing to the back of my mind. I spent the last few weeks trying to push away these thoughts in the hope that they would disappear, but instead I found it coming back stronger every time. Pushing away fear only gives it more time to simmer in your brain and turn into something bigger. What I thought was getting rid of my anxieties was really me choosing not to face it. Finally, I realized that I needed to direct my fears to God and give them to Him. I still cannot say that I am living fearlessly, but even the short amount of time I spent turning my fear into faith makes me want to share this with you all. I figured that if I am going through this, there must be somebody else dealing with something similar. I hope this strikes a chord with you, no matter what walk of life you are in.
What do I do with fear?
When I am struggling with fear, I never know what I am supposed to do once I recognize that I am dealing with it. I’ve heard people say that you should give your fears to God, but what does that even mean? “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:7). Even though I find it very comforting to know that God can take my fears, I am such a practical person, and I never quite understood how I was supposed to do that. How do you even give thoughts to God anyways? Then, I found a journal entry from my freshman year that totally changed how I saw it. It said, “Being fearless isn’t just throwing everything on God and forgetting about it, but it is putting your fears, your doubts, your situations in His hands and allowing Him to give you strength to overcome them”.
At the time, I was in the middle of a new experience, and there were a lot of unknowns that caused me to always be worried. After a particularly hard day, I learned that you cannot overcome fear: only God can. If you try to deal with it yourself, you might be able to cope for a while, but you can never get rid of it without the help of the Lord. Nothing is bigger than the God of the Universe, so there is no way any of your fears are beyond His power.
One of my favorite chapters in the Bible, Psalm 56, puts it this way: “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me?” (Psalm 56:3-4). Fear is the absence of faith, and faith is the understanding that God is bigger than our fears. If we have faith that the Lord will give us what we need to get through the day, we shouldn’t be afraid of the unknowns. If God knows everything, we can trust that he knows what we need each and every day.
Another thing that I learned recently is that fear is Satan trying to hold us back from complete obedience to God. If you want to obey God’s commands for your life, you can’t allow the fears of what will happen or what other people think and say dictate your actions. Jesus lived his life being judged by the world and disliked by so many people, but none of those things stopped him from fulfilling his plan of dying and being resurrected. God’s will for your life cannot be completed as long as fear is in the picture.
If you’re like me and struggle with pushing away fears, it’s important to know what to do with them. First, I have to acknowledge my fear. I push it aside a lot, so I can’t overcome it if I am not willing to accept that it is something I am struggling with. After that, I tell God in prayer that I am fearful of this thing, and that I don’t know how to overcome it. I ask for the strength to overcome that fear, and I always get my prayer answered. However, it is important to know that if you pray for strength over this fear, God isn’t just going to make you not afraid of that thing anymore. Instead, he is going to give you a situation in which you have to overcome that fear. This will take a lot of bravery, and it won’t be something that you want to do, but if you pray for strength, you have to be prepared for God to give you a situation where you need to be strong. Once you get past that fear though, it is such a freeing experience!
Habits to Start Now!
Now that I’ve shared a bit of my story with fear, especially with the start of the school year, I want to share some good habits for the school year that are probably good to start right now. I’ll be working on these as well, because I want to make the most of my junior year: doing well in my classes while still having fun. These are a combination of tips that I’ve learned through experience and things that I want to start working on to get better at.
The most important part of school is your mindset! If you walk into a class thinking that it will be so boring and you’ll hate it, chances are good that this is exactly what will happen. However, if you are focused on doing your best and having a good day, it makes it a lot harder to have a bad attitude and a bad day.
Be wise with your weekend. This year, I want to take at least one day out of my weekend to relax and reset myself from the past week of school, sports, and my social life. Sometimes, it might look like getting my environment clean and taking care of myself physically and mentally, so that when school does start back up on Monday that I feel prepared to get work done and do my best. Other times, it might look like spending time with friends and family after not seeing them for a while. When you’re busy, it’s still important to be intentional about being with others, because fellowship is so crucial!
Do your best in all your classes. I know it’s not the most fun thing to do, especially if you’re taking challenging classes, but hard work always pays off! If you have trouble keeping yourself accountable, maybe a study group would work well for you. A great idea is to get some friends together and meet up at a coffee shop once a week to help each other with hard topics and to encourage each other. Prioritize homework and studying, because grades really do have an impact on your future. Don’t work so hard you burn yourself out, but put effort in every day of your classes.
Take healthy breaks! While you’re spending a day studying or catching up on homework, make sure you are rewarding yourself with breaks periodically. There are a lot of different methods that work, but find what works best for you and try to make that a habit to keep yourself energized. For me, I have learned to take a five minute break every fifteen minutes, and every hour take a ten minute break. At that time, you can be on your phone, but it would be more beneficial to do something like stretch, eat a healthy snack, or do some quick chores around the house to keep a clean environment.
I hope these tips were at least somewhat helpful and encouraged you to make the best out of this school year. I’ll be praying for all of you, because I know that God is going to do amazing things in and through all of you this next year. It’ll be hard, but He uses the hard days to get us to grow closer to Him.
コメント