Tag: Anxiety
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children’s books for mental health awareness month
May is Mental Health Awareness Month! I keep hearing disturbing stats about the recent decline in mental health for kids, teens, and adults. Of course, there are many ways we must address this individually and collectively, but these are some really beautiful books to support children’s mental health. They cover topics such as anxiety, depression,…
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before you go
before you go Stay with yourselfStay with this momentStay with this holy unfoldingStay with this goodness.When your wise body tells you “This is good,”Stay. When your chest is wide open,expanding the width of the whole world,so entwined with creationthat the very breeze feels likethe breath expanding your lungs—Stay.Linger on this holy ground. When you glimpse…
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words that come from silence
words that come from silenceby Lindsay L. O’ConnorI want words that come from silence,like when the world began.Words born in noise have their place, to be sure,but there is so much noisefrom reacting without much thought,without checking in firstwith the body, heart, and mind,to see how the message might be refinedin the furnace of our…
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in the ring
In the RingLindsay L. O’Connor Well today, I was just fighting with God.I mean fighting. I woke up early, stomach upset,and was just “doing panic” for an hour.I reminded God of all the lovely ways God has helped me through panic before,but God would not be moved. “We’ve done this before,” I said.“Remember the reassurances?The…
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Anxiety Dance
Anxiety Dance I used to think anxiety was a moral failure, a personal flaw, an indication of a lack of faith. I thought if I tried hard enough and prayed often enough, I could send her away, her departure the reward for my spiritual growth. Then, do you know, the more I tried to get…
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breath prayer for anxious souls
Breath Prayer for Anxious Souls Inhale: O Holy One, come swiftly. Exhale: Return me to myself. Breath Prayer for Authenticity Inhale: Emmanuel, God with us, Exhale: Help me stay with myself. God gave each of us the gift of a Self. During panic attacks, high anxiety or high emotion moments, or just regular old stress…
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nothing has changed, but everything looks different
Four years ago today, I snapped this picture of one small, red suitcase and captioned it, “One tiny suitcase is all you need when you’re packing for one. I had forgotten what that’s like!” I was leaving my 1 year old and my preschooler to go to Houston for two nights. It was the first…
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Healed People Heal People
I poured my heart and soul into this post I wrote about healing for our church’s blog over at Arapaho United Methodist Church. I’m overwhelmed with gratitude for the way God has met me in my pain and shame and am passionate about normalizing this conversation! Healed People Heal People BY LINDSAY O’CONNOR Father Richard…
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4 AM panic prayer
I woke up at 3:15 this morning in a panic. A nagging pain in my side, coupled with some other minor health issues over the past couple days, triggered anxiety-inducing memories of some medical emergencies I’ve had over the last few years. I tried my go-to coping strategies but was struggling with an inconvenient middle-of-the-night…
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ask for what you need
I used to think that I needed to shrink myself smaller and smaller so my needs would disappear. Some years ago, I was talking to my therapist about the intense anxiety I felt as I sat for over an hour in a doctor’s waiting room not long after I had had a miscarriage. The doctor’s…
Lindsay L. O'Connor 