It’s interesting to me that in this season, with all that is happening, there’s been a lot of stress and frustration, anger and opinions and processing of thoughts that we all have to struggle and deal with. I definitely need a stress releaser, a stress reliever.
I need someone who takes that stress off of me and makes my burden easy and my yoke light.
I can’t imagine living life without that stress reliever. Without knowing that Jesus truly wants me to live a stress-free existence on this earth. Sometimes that means giving something up or readjusting my schedule or getting rid of something that doesn’t need to be there. I realized I had added something into my schedule this week that I didn’t need, and I had to remove it. I gave myself the freedom to let it go because it was distressing to my life.
What does stress do to kindness? When I’m under a lot of stress, I tend to internalize, and then I tend to spew out my frustrations and my concerns. I don’t think about the other person in front of me, and I don’t think about their need or their concern. I have learned that stress does take away my kindness. It robs me of kindness, of goodness towards others because my focus is on myself. I focus on my need, my stress. Then my level of capacity drops significantly, and I struggle to connect outside my own need.
That’s when I realized this week that there must be something in my life that I needed to remove. I had to ask myself, What am I doing that is stealing or causing my time to be robbed that is affecting my emotional, my mental, my physical, even my spiritual ability to cope day to day? I begin to speak this out and pray.
I gave myself the right to remove that excess piece. To remove that expectation out of my life. I gave myself permission because I don’t want to lose my kindness for others. I don’t want to focus so inwardly that I miss seeing what that person in front of me is dealing with, is going through. I know they need kindness. God wants to speak kindness into their life, and He wants to use me as His heartbeat.
As I gave myself the right and the privilege to remove the excess from my life, to release it and to remove the stress by inviting Christ to extinguish it, to dissolve it into nothing through His peace—through His understanding—it released me to become that center of kindness, the distribution center of kindness in the lives of those around me, beginning with my family and moving outward from there
You are a distribution center of Christ’s kindness. You have the attributes of kindness within you. How can you distribute kindness today? How can you get the word out that we are to activate our distribution center of kindness to the world around us—through us—by Christ’s kindness into the lives of others? Listen to the entire podcast at this link. {eoa}
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