stress and trust

Julie has been stressing lately - it's been the subject of some discussion for the last couple of days. I gave her a blessing that she would gain a measure of the Peace of the Lord, but that to gain more, she had to learn of it herself. For whatever reason, I believe the term "the rest of the Lord" is similar enough to be considered synonymous for a person at my spiritual level.

She is pretty good at stressing. She stresses about her goals and how to reach them. She stresses about her weight - it kinda seems to be her go-to answer for things she's uncomfortable about. I think many of us are like that. We know that stress accomplishes nothing, but we choose it anyway.

This would likely have something to do with today's scripture. I felt guided to move into Isaiah. I didn't have the bible handy, so I went into 2 Nephi 27. Reading first in verse 2, "I will trust and not be afraid; for the Lord Jehovah is my strength..."

It seems to me that trust and fear are opposites. I talked to her about that. Stress and fear are probably about the same thing. We decided that stress is feeling like a person should must do something by himself or herself, without any help from God, and the spirit knowing that it doesn't work that way. It's like putting pressure on yourself to do something that you can't do without God's help, but you don't include God in the equation.

It's like fear and stress are about the self - and at times choosing fear or stress may be a bit selfish - when it is so much more rewarding to choose trust. To know that we're inadequate, but yet that's OK because everyone is inadequate and relying on God makes us "enough".

She has the word "effortless" on her board, something that she felt inspired to place there after she was inspired by someone months ago. It is meant to help her realize that her goals can and should be "effortless", which to her means stress free. She has an entire wall filled with a beautiful and artful "trust your journey" decor. This is a phrase about trusting in forces higher than us - that when we are doing the right things, the Lord sets our feet on the right paths and we walk in the right direction. Of course, we don't often recognize the path and it often doesn't look like what we expected, so we feel fear - and stress.

But. Verse 2 again: Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid; for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song; he also has become my salvation.

Verse 3 talks about drinking water out of the wells of salvation. This goes me back to the conversation Jesus had with the woman at the well. Drinking the kind of water that makes us live. Reading scripture, praying, being there in full mind and purpose at church meetings, listening to the prophets, searching for guidance and being open to it when it happens - and acting on it instead of dismissing it as something else. This is what drinking out of the wells of salvation means to me.

And when we do so? We grow in faith, in love, and in trust. The path is foreign, but we don't need it to be familiar - we are guided not by the path at our feet but by the light we see and feel.