Do you have power?
You do. You are not feckless, weak, incompetent. You are savvy, cogent, strong! God did not give you a spirit of fear but a spirit of power! 
Today I received a package from Amazon that I ordered for my daughter. It’s a set of Skullcandy head phones. I took the time to make sure that they worked fine. Doing something for others, that always makes me feel better. You and I have the power to make other people’s lives better.
Buy extra toilet paper if you must. Then give some of it away to your neighbors.
You have power. You have agency. That power is in your body. All the arteries, veins, and capillaries of a human child, stretched end to end, are estimated to wrap around the Earth about 2.5 times (the equivalent of about 60,000 miles). Blood is pulsing through your whole body today nourishing and caring for your cells. Such built-in power is keeping you alive! It is allowing you to move your limbs and do things today. How wonderful!
Today I dust mopped the floors. What a privilege to have a home, to have floors, to clean.
You have power in your mind. The average brain has 86 billion neurons. Today you can remember good things and learn new things. My daughter is making soup. She asked for my recipe. We texted back-and-forth about yummy soup and spices.
Today I’m writing this blog. I’m doing this to give myself advice, and I’m hoping that it helps you, one of my friends, to have a better day. Our lives are now limited but they can be still directional.
Your spirit is powerful. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that “[God] has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart.” We actually have a built in sense of surviving, lasting, being saved from even death. We are predisposed to anticipate salvation.
Something in you wants to live. Something if you want to live a beautiful life. That was put there by God. Recognize his desire within you. You just made contact with your own spirit. The will to live is physical; it is also spiritual.
It is especially important to realize your power when you don’t feel like your life is beautiful. Use your mind to tell yourself what is true and good for you. For me it is good that others love me and take care of me.
We can’t control all of reality, but we can somewhat control our reactions to it. Maintain your narrative fidelity. Be true to your own story. My story is tied to the earth. I garden. I grow flowers. And grass. It rained today! I love to hear it in the gutters? The grass is greenly grateful.
Today I’m reminding myself that I have enough, that I am enough, that I have done enough and that whatever else there is for me to do is in God’s hands. I’m trusting him for his definition for my level of productivity in the future.
Today many of us are sheltered at home because of the coronavirus. We may feel somewhat helpless and anxious, powerless in our new darker, poorer, diseased, Stygian world.
Anxious questions may arise in our minds. Will we get sick? Will we have enough food? Will those of us who work be able to keep our jobs and pay our bills?
For those of us who suffer illnesses, will we be able to get proper medical care?
Such questions make us feel helpless and powerless because they bring up possible deprivations or losses.
But we have the power to take charge of our thoughts and reactions. We can choose to obsess on what’s wrong, or we can focus on mini-solutions to our questions.
We can go over our financial resources and make an emergency plan, write it down, consider options. What will we do if we are out of work for a month? What will we do if we are out of work for two months? Plans help calm our anxieties. If we aren’t sure of a financial decision we can call someone we trust who is good with finances and ask what they would do. I know someone who did that yesterday and the wise financial step suggested hadn’t been thought about before.
We can eat the food we have today and enjoy it. I just finished a coconut popsicle! I’m drinking a calming tea now. If you need more food, plan a trip to the store when others may not be there in great numbers. There is enough food in the stores. Make wise choices. If you need more medicine order it online.
Today, at home, we have the power to do many things that are important.
We can titrate our exposure to the news. That means we can keep up and stay informed and yet sense when we’re watching too much and just creating more anxiety in ourselves. There’s a balance somewhere.
Today we can rest from striving, from trying to justify our existence by what we do, and we can do something really powerful, and that is to realize that we were worthy of being loved without performing. We can do this by being kind to ourselves today, for example moving between small projects and resting.
I just cooked up a spaghetti squash for dinner. I made a small bean taco for a snack! It was a cheery little taco! With its corn tortilla it tasted kind of like a tamale.
It was a small kindness to myself.
What does it look like to be kind to oneself?
It means making choices that are within our power that nurture our bodies and souls. I’m reading a good book today, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb. Lori weaves her own story of going to counseling with the stories of those who come to her for therapy. This book reminds me that our presenting issues are not always are real issues. It helps me to ask what is really going on with me? It helps me to reevaluate my stories and think: Has what I have been telling myself true or not?
We can can do other home things, cleaning, reorganizing, watching positive TV shows, texting friends or talking on the phone to family.
I love you. I want you to feel safe. I want you to love yourself.
What will you do the rest of this day to calm, sooth and nurture yourself and the ones you love?
Thrive! 