Improving Mental Health to Increase Our Ability to Fight Against the Enemy

Your Best You Blog Series (part 3 of 4)

Welcome back to part 3 of my Your Best You blog series. Today, I will explore the events of my previous post, Anchored in Truth and Light to Fight Against the Lies and Darkness, and how my mental state played right into the enemy’s hands. If you haven’t read it, click the link. There I talked about how being grounded in God’s truth can help us fight the enemy’s lies. Today I will talk about the steps I’ve taken to get myself into a better place mentally to, hopefully, avoid falling prey again. 

When we talk about mental and emotional health, the mental aspect is how we process information and facts we receive, and the emotional element is how we feel about it. Living in a foreign culture already increases one’s base stress level. As we fill our minds with even more information, worry, responsibilities, etc., it can negatively affect how we mentally process new information. 

When I think back to the phone call from my friend that sent me into a spiral of shame and guilt, I realize it wasn’t the information she shared that sent me reeling, but it was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. So many things had taken up residence in my brain—the concern of increased crime, the need for improved home security, and decreased social interaction, to name a few. Since I was already in a heightened state of stress, I had a reduced margin for processing new information. And that is what that phone call was—information. And unfortunately, my mind received and processed it as another failure to add to the ever-growing list of areas I believed I was already failing. 

But here’s the truth, I am not failing. Neither are you. 

We all have a hundred or more things on our minds. One problem is that we never know when more information will come or what it will be. So, in many ways, we always need to have the margin to receive and process new data—healthily. 

Here are a few things I’ve implemented to clear up some mental space:

• I’ve started a to-do list. I’m not a list person, meaning I don’t want to have a list just to check off boxes. But I’ve discovered prioritizing and writing down what I need to do helps me with my mental state for most of the day. 
  
• I’ve reached out to friends here to have a social outlet with others who understand what I’m going through. We can often take for granted how much social interaction affects our well-being. The pandemic opened many people’s eyes to how important it is to be with others.
  
• I try to maintain a regular sleep schedule. Establishing a regular bedtime and getting up at the same time every day is surprisingly refreshing.
  
• I exercise daily, eat a healthy diet, and drink lots of water. As I mentioned in my post on physical health, nutrition and exercise are crucial to how the rest of our systems perform. That’s not to say I don’t indulge in treats now and again, but overall, I eat a healthy, balanced diet.
  
• I’ve connected with a counselor, enabling me to work through grief or depression, whether new or lingering from childhood. I can also process some stressors of living overseas and the challenges we face every day.
  
• I spend time in prayer each morning. I may have put this last, but it’s because it’s the most important. I thank God for a new day and all He has blessed me with. I thank Him for the challenges and victories of the previous day. I ask Him to allow me to feel His presence and to fill my heart and mind with His peace. Being connected with God and acknowledging His presence, glory, and power puts all my struggles in the proper perspective.
  

Implementing these things has allowed for more capacity to process new information. I hope you can come up with a few ideas to implement as you prepare to serve overseas. One important thing to remember, the more you can prioritize self-care before you move overseas, the more chances you’ll have of success and fewer chances of early burnout. Join me next time as I dive into emotional health. 

Will you join me in prayer?

Father God, I pray for Your wisdom and guidance as I prioritize and implement self-care strategies. I pray You will show me where I need to pull back and do less and where I am strong. Please help me remember I should not prioritize tasks over my health. Thank You that I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Please help me care for this temple You’ve created. I pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

I adapted today’s blog post from my book Living Uprooted: Encouragement for the Missionary Wife. The chapter in the book discusses physical and nutritional health, spiritual health, and mental and emotional health—taking time for ourselves to reconnect with God and clear our minds.

If you want to purchase my book, you can find it at Amazon, Redemption Press, or Barnes and Noble.

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