37 Tips for Handling Stress (The Stressed Out Series)

Welcome, to my new series on the blog: The Stressed Out Series.

If you have been here before, you know the theme of our summer was moving. Actually, the theme of the whole first half of the year was moving.

Now we are moving on to the theme of stress management, because as it turns out if the theme of your year is moving, stress is going to come along too.

Most of the boxes are unpacked, but I still have not found JD’s clothes, the scale, or my Fitbit charger, just to name a few. School has already begun, and kids’ sports are eating up all of our evenings and weekends. Alan leaves town a lot and works twelve hour shifts, so as you can imagine, there is only one thing on my mind:

Stress. Yep. Stress, stress, stress, and more stress.

For me this year, life is mostly about finding healthy ways to handle stress.

I know what you are thinking. “April, when are you ever not stressed?”

Fair point, I guess, though it does not sound very nice. Ha!

I DO remember a couple of years of my life when I was not too stressed, believe it or not.

Picture it. 2010. We moved to D.C., and it was the most exciting thing that ever happened to me. We had never been to D.C.! It was so fun to explore all these new, famous and historic places! Before 2010, we had only seen these famous monuments on the back of our money!

Alan had the kind of job where he got off at 5pm. His office was so close, he could ride his bicycle to work, and he did. The kids were young enough we did not have to worry about school at all yet. Life was good, good, good. Happy, happy, happy.

It was hard work, but I felt more happy than stressed.

I remember I used to say to people, “I feel like things are so perfect, it is almost scary. I just know something terrible is going to happen because things are so wonderful right now.”

You know what? I am thankful for those years. We will have more years like that. I know we will. Yes, we have had other great years. All of them have been blessed in their own way. Hard times and delight usually arrive all mixed in together anyway.

Are you in a stressful time too?

What do you do to handle your stress? Do you sit down and write to sort out the feelings, like I do? I laid out some good journaling questions for that on this post.

Do you exercise?

Watch hours of t.v. or apps on your phone and kind of hide from it all?

Do you call your mom or a friend to vent?

There are so many different healthy ways to handle stress. That link is to a WebMD article. It sums up the basics of the matter quite well.

When I am super stressed, I cannot really process a ton of information at once though.

So for this series on handling stress, I am going to focus on one tip per post. And since I never finished my graduate degree in counseling, we are going to mostly be pulling these tips from Psalm 37.

That is where I got the number “37 ways to handle stress.” Ha. See what I did there?

Each article in this series will focus on ONE way to handle stress.

Have you ever heard of Psalm 37?

This chapter of the Bible is so helpful to me that for my junior year in college, I copied the entire chapter onto paper and hung it on the wall of my dorm room. I absolutely love it.

Normally, we would do the chapter in order, but today was special. Today was the first day of school, so today was all about stressing over my kids, honestly. It was about supporting them through their hard adventures. So we are going to skip on down to Psalm 37: 25-26.

Today’s snippet:

I have been young, and now am old;
Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken,
Nor his descendants begging bread.
²⁶ He is ever merciful, and lends;
And his descendants are blessed.

~Psalm 37: 25-26

Why this is helpful:

Here the Bible comforts us about our children and our troubles. I love it, and I agree with it. Yes, I HAVE been young, and now I am kind of old.

And you know what? I have never seen the righteous forsaken nor his children begging for bread.

God is merciful, and he does lend, as does the righteous person.

God’s people should never be hard, unbending, stingy people. We should be helpers and lenders.

I love it when my family is in a more stable time, and we can be the ones to help other people.

Believe it or not, that is us every once in a while. We are not always new and needy. I promise we aren’t. This fall, yeah. We are a little lost sometimes. Don’t you hate feeling needy?

Yet, somehow God always takes care of us. What we truly need, we always have.

It says “the righteous” are not forsaken. God counts faith in Him as righteousness. You can read more about that here.

I challenge you to trust God for this too. Trust God to take care of you and your children. Take a breath of relief. Maybe we do not have to always have all the answers. The Bible says God’s people are never forsaken.

So in summary, tip #1 is to trust God to take care of you.

You are never forsaken.

When you are feeling stressed out, trusting God takes e-f-f-o-r-t. You have to get down on your knees, and let Him comfort you. I did that today, and let me tell you, it made a world of difference.

Tears may come, and that is okay too.

And tip #2: When you are stressed, be merciful to others.

It says that God is merciful, and he is. I think that means we should be merciful too. For me, that usually means I have to go back and apologize to people who I was UNmerciful to when I was stressing out.

Putting up with stressed out people is annoying. Sometimes I feel sorry for my family for having to deal with me when I am stressed.

Now I wish I had a tip for how to be more merciful and careful with your words in the moment that you are actually stressing out and getting on everyone’s nerves, but that is still something I am working on myself.

Best of all, you can read Psalm 37 here.

I hope you find it as reassuring as I always have.

Thirty-five more tips to come in this series!

Here is what to expect in the rest of the Stressed Out Series:

1. Trust God to take care of you.
2. Be merciful.
3. Do not worry about other people’s problems.
4. Fret not over horrible things you see others doing.
5. Do not freak out because bad people seem to be winning.
6. Trust that the Lord can handle the world’s problems.
7. Do good.
8. Dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.
9. Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
10. Commit your way to the Lord.
11. Be still, and wait patiently.
12. Refrain from anger.
13. Forsake wrath.
14. Delight in abundant peace.
15. The Lord upholds the righteous.
16. Be generous with your love.
17. Give of your time, talents, and money.
18. Turn from evil.
19. Utter wisdom.
20. Speak justice.
21. Keep the Lord’s way.
22. Mark the blameless.
23. Watch and Learn from the upright.
24. God is your stronghold. Let go of your limiting beliefs.
25. Take refuge in God.
26. Accept that you cannot control everything.
27. Realize that you cannot control other people.
28. It is not your mission to change the world.
29. Do not worry about things that are out of your control.
30. Nap and a snack.
31. Human limitations: hormones, rest, diet, and exercise
32. Make a list of what it is that is stressing you so much.
33. Commit that list to fervent prayer.
34. Break those goals into the smallest steps you can think of.
35. Take one step on whatever your march is.
36. Take another step.
37. Journal your journey, in words, art, or just talking. Notice how far you have come.

Plus, I would love it if you share some of your favorite ways to handle your stressed out seasons in the comments below.