When praise and gratitude feels hard.

We are so driven by feelings, as humans. Doing things, saying things, buying things, not doing things, because we ‘felt’ like it, or didn’t ‘feel’ like it.

No denying it or glossing it over, these past few years have been tough, I have written about this before and I know I am not alone.

A pastor preached years ago about accepting that an involved life will include almost as much blessing as it will trials all at the same time.

Looking back at the year already, we are in December again! I can say the same I have for a number of years, ‘what a year it's been’.

A year of incredible blessing, answered prayers, love, laughter, joy, provision, and at the same time, hard, sticky, at times dark, emotional, uncertain, change, challenge after challenge.

As an optimist, I am always looking for silver linings, for the good side of things. Sometimes when the challenges keep rolling like a song on repeat, it is hard for even the most positive of us to keep our chin up.

Praise and gratitude come easy when things are going well, when prayers have been answered the way we wanted.

It is easy to show up in life and for things when we feel happy, or that everything is ‘ok’.

Let me say up front that the times I have been blessed the most are when I push through and turn up when things are hard, when there are big multiple challenges going on, I am tired, over it, impatient waiting for breakthroughs or answers. When I feel flat, slightly depressed, tearful, angry, or sad.

When I am standing singing in church and my heart is heavy, or my mind is full of worry thoughts, when I feel that I might fall apart, to stay and keep pressing in, keep standing in God's presence and the presence of my church whanau as I am, raw, real and vulnerable is hard, but also the times when I get the biggest breakthrough, or experience the biggest tough of God.

It is often not in the way that I expect either, sometimes when I feel I need prayer, God will guide me to pray for others.

I started a new book this past week, Power Thoughts, by Joyce Meyer. Punchy, practical and calling out our humanness around negative thinking, running our life's decisions off our feelings and more chewy stuff like that.

Joyce is gifted in preaching and writing on the real topics we battle with as women, and this book is all about the battle that goes on in our heads, I have also read, more than once, the Battlefield of the mind, also by Joyce, if you have not read it and know you get stuck in your head often, I recommend it.

In this famous ‘Joyce’ quote, she is dealing with that powerful state we get in as humans, thinking that happiness is linked to our circumstances. She challenges this with a simple, yet tricky solution, to choose to be happy despite our circumstances!

I will say, I have been trying to apply this solution for a long time, and I can report that it is very much a work in progress today.

This year I have battled with my mind and moods a lot, I have no idea why, but I am guessing one probable cause is the tiredness of my overly busy life has drained my resources and reserves, like only filling your car with $10 petrol every day, instead of filling it to full at the start of the week, the gas evaporates quicker with less in the tank and it is always almost on empty.

I have struggled to get out of bed more often, struggled to push myself out the door to walk more often, struggled with over eating all the wrong things to give me energy, struggled with energy to do the things that light me up.

What I have found, and have to keep reminding myself, is that when I push through the ‘muddy’ moments, and go anyway, show up anyway, pray and praise anyway, give thanks anyway, the clouds move aside and the energy comes, sometimes the circumstances don’t even change much or at all, my perspective on them does.

There is science behind this, that exercise and singing both create energy, it is such a hard pill to swallow, that the very thing you really don’t feel like doing is one of the main things you need to do to get into a more positive space!

Philippians 4:11–13

11 Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. 12 I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. 13 I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me.

Some of the other things I do to lift the fog, aside from deciding to just ‘show up’ to the things that I know will truly fill my cup, when I really don’t feel like even leaving the house:

• Have a playlist of songs that I can play/sing loudly, and know will lift my spirits, worship music.

• Reading a good book that challenges my thinking.

• Listening to podcasts that remind me of God’s goodness and grace.

• List out all the things I am grateful for, once you get going it is like a snowball down a hill.

• Get around positive people, who make you laugh.

• Watch or read something funny.

• Go to church and be around people praising and worshipping God, even if you don’t ‘feel it’ yourself it will rub off.

• Pray for others, even if in your head, taking the focus of yourself is a magic tool.

• Reading God’s promises, if you are too tired to pick up the bible and find scriptures that can help you, put them on your phone background.

• Make time to walk or work out with a friend or friends, that way you are less likely to ‘pull out’ for lame reasons, it is also way more inspiring walking with others.

• Go bush or to the sea.

• Ground yourself by taking your shoes off in the bush or sand.

Ask someone else to pray for you, this is really hard if you are used to putting up a lot of masks and keeping private about the challenges in your life, but you don’t have to share the details of the challenge if you don’t want to, you can just ask someone to pray about your energy or peace and God will do the rest, he knows what you need even before you do.

The key for me this year has been doing something, or some things, when I really felt like doing nothing.

I am also aware that sometimes doing nothing, resting is what is needed in any given moment, and that too is OK.

Proverbs 23:7 says, "For as he thinks in his heart, so is he"

For those who follow me on social media as friends, I am always posting positive statements I find, and sharing positive messaging, that doesn’t mean I am always up, and actually when I post the most, I am sharing as a reminder to self as much as anyone else I care about.

I usually share because something spoke to me directly and I know it may speak to someone else that day.

My final ‘quote’ that I love and think of as often as I can is:

What we feed grows.

Remember misery loves company, watch out how you speak, the words you use, they are usually indicating your thought life, and who you speak those to, if you are around others that love misery and you find yourself complaining, moaning, being consoled for feeling miserable all the time, it may be time to look at feeding a different beast.

Get around people who will listen but also challenge you to a better version of yourself, challenge you to seek more of the things that will feed good energy, not negating your feelings, because feelings are valid, but they are not facts!

That is another Joyce quote - Feelings are not facts!

I wrote a whole business article around this a few years about on the topic of communication and I used to teach that ‘feelings provide information’ that is all, they can give us information to empower us to take action, they are only part of the picture.

Feeding your feelings goes both ways, we can either feed feelings of sadness, anger, hopelessness, doom, or we can choose to feed feelings of the complete opposite of all of those things.

We can choose to seek out things, situations and people that will help us cultivate more joy, happiness, love, acceptance, gratitude, and hope.

My prayer for you (and myself) is that you find more of those things in your life by seeking them intentionally, each day.

Arohanui

Jen

PS:

Favourite songs

• Graves into gardens, Elevation worship

• Gratitude, Brandon Lake

• I speak Jesus, Charity Gayle

• Goodness of God, Bethel Music

• Run to the father, Cody Carnes