I’ve started three different blogs today all around the theme of being in Bellingham for 6 weeks, all about the loveliness that surrounds me and the lessons that I’m learning and walking in.

But before I write that blog there is apparently something I need to get off my chest, something that sneaks up on me here and there and lately it’s been trying to steal from me and cause me to question truth around me.

There is something I just need to say:

Anxiety is a bitch.

It creeps up on me in the weirdest of moments and decides that it is allowed to make home here.

But to that anxiety I would like to say this:

Hell no!

I think we all have things, certain feelings, certain skeletons that are long since dead and buried that try to come up above ground and live normally with us. 

They sneak in the backdoor and hide in a crevice around the corner and just wait. They wait for that singular moment to sneak up on you and jump in.

And sometimes you don’t even notice. 

Tonight I was struck with anxiety sitting at a restaurant with friends and it began to bubble up. It grew like a weed, really fast because I just didn’t notice it.

We were having some spirit-filled conversation and the anxiety inside me started to react to it, started to push against it and all I wanted to do was run. I wanted to get out of that restaurant as fast as I possibly could.

I wanted to get in the coziest of clothes and get as far away from people as I could.

But I knew that’s not what I needed.

I needed to stand my ground. 

That’s what it was.

In the moment that I wanted to hide in my room I realized that I just needed to stand my freaking ground and reclaim my headspace and my heart space and remember that I have the ability to do that.

I can easily allow anxiety to have control over my emotion. I can allow it to cause me to spiral into the oblivion, to cry and to surrender to the chaos and confusion that I feel in my head.

Sometimes it is actually there. And when it is I do have to deal with it.

But tonight the moment I gave a “hell no” to the mess inside it began to subside and ease up.

When I stomped my feet and stood my ground physically the knot inside began to untwist.

My life isn’t easy-breezy right now.

I am working hard and jumping into community.

I have lessons I’m being taught and truths I’m being reminded of.

But I am also learning that I have the power to move mountains inside me and today as I told the anxiety inside me to go to hell I’m realizing that I can indeed to that.

So this is my encouragement, my challenge and my reminder: stomp your feet, stand your ground and remember that the person with the power to fight hardest is yourself. Your words to yourself are just needed as your words to others.

And the other part of that is this: surround yourself with good people. Because they will give you the courage to stomp your feet and stand your ground.

So I guess this blog does speak of the loveliness of this place because I am surrounded by truth, kingdom and love and I have the roaring voice inside me to yell back at what comes at me.

I have people around me on a daily basis that walk in who they are and because of that I am able to stand in who I am.

This community empowers me more then I can describe.

And man, is it lovely.