Real Power for Real Change --- Managing Mondays and Other Frustrating Forces That Weigh You Down

{I am posting this a day late, I realize…but hey, yesterday was Monday…}


A clean slate. Don’t we always look for opportunity for a turn-around? A place where we can draw a line in our path and make a change? Successfully?


More workouts. Less calories. Less social media. Less anxiety. More peace. More trust. More discipline. More sleep. More giving. Less consuming. These are things I want to succeed at, but so often feel like the mighty forces pushing me backwards are stronger than I.


Some days I go to bed feeling like I really wasted the day; I blew it. I look forward to a fresh start in the next {new} day.

Some mornings I wake up and feel like I don’t have what I need to make it. Because it’s cold and I like to stay under my covers. Because I went to bed too late. Because I don’t have children to wake up which once forced me out of bed. Or sometimes because I feel inadequate for some task on my schedule for the day…

And it’s easy to talk myself out of a workout when I get out of bed too late.


So now it’s here. The {new} year! And after two cold weeks with two Mondays, (that is a double negative in my book) I’m feeling pretty desperate for a shift. With Christmas and New Year’s Day in the middle of the week, Thursday became Monday. Four Monday’s in two weeks.


My Mondays can feel like a fresh start and I like to keep them that way by saying ‘no’ to putting anything on my schedule outside of my Monday tasks so I can regroup after the weekend. I like to clean up the house, do laundry, get my online banking and any paperwork done.


But there are the Mondays when something imposes itself into my schedule and I have to tend to it.

And then there are the Mondays when I look over the week, and an invisible cloud descends upon my head-or maybe it’s more like a weight attaches itself to my leg… and I think it is due to seeing the whole week’s responsibilities from one day’s perspective. And I’m overcome by the paralysis of analysis. The elephant in my room has parked right down on top of me.


I’m good at making mountains out of molehills on Mondays.


I realize the only way around this is to intentionally attack my manic-Monday mentality with truth. Attack vigorously and moment-by-moment if necessary. In order to do that I need to discern the thoughts that bombard my mind that need to go. Then obliterate them.


Honestly, those times when I actually understand what is behind a strong-hold in my mind, when I have the light-bulb moments: “a-ha!”


I marvel at my blindness.


For instance, a little over a decade ago, I was suffering with debilitating anxiety, and it had been going on for a year or so. I was sitting in a workshop at Northwestern College when the presenter, who was doing a workshop on intimacy with God said, “Some of us listen to too many voices.” …and in my head that day, the voices of certain people whose words had become laws, whom I was afraid of crossing or disappointing came to me as what they truly were: Wrong voices. And in a moment, tears flowing, I realized I had made idols of those people. I was not living for THEE Lord, I was living for wee lords.


And I felt so stupid afterwords. Before that moment, I subconsciously felt I was a victim to the thoughts in my head, when in fact, I was making a choice to submit my actions to what a few others might think. Hence my my anxienty came to me after a moment of truth was held up my heart!


I had another such “a-ha” moment recently when I picked up a book entitled, “Feeling Loved” by Marnie Swedberg, our Pastor’s aunt who we had the honor of having for our speaker this year at our annual Ladies’ Christmas Cafe.


I had seen Marnie’s friendship with Jesus and it seemed somehow more ‘familiar’ than mine, maybe less formal…closer. And though I know He is near and I talk with Him daily, I still long for more: feeling closer to Jesus.


Chapter 1 is entitled, “God sees you as friend material.” And you know what? I discovered not too far into it, that the only thing that would keep one from feeling loved is not believing they are. The only thing keeping me from feeling loved every moment is not believing that I am.


Do you have days that you don’t feel loved?


Every barrier to Jesus can be broken by making the CHOICE to believe.


Believe the truth of God’s word over everything that keeps me in bondage to manic and mayhem. Like on those certain Mondays…


It’s right there in John 15:15 (how is that for an easy address to memorize?) Jesus says it right there, “I have called you friends.”


I know that…in my head…and realized in that moment that I must moment-by-moment receive it (BELIEVE it) in my heart. I have often felt His friendship, but it seems more occasional than continual. More like a friend who lives hours away and we chat from time to time. A friend who is there in times of need, decision making, celebrating special occasions, but not one that lives right under the same roof. Right in the same skin… One who is Emmanuel. God with me. WITH. And scripture says He is even closer than that-He is IN me. John 15:4


Jesus is with me and in me. The King of Creation is. that. close. That should make a huge impact on every moment, right?


How about those Mondays? The “I can’t” or “It’s too much for me to handle” is remedied by the Truth moment-by-moment: (preaching to myself all day on Monday if I have to) I CAN do ALL things through Christ who strengthens me. Philippians 4:13 It is NOT my by might or power, but by His Spirit, He says so! Zechariah 4:6 It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, the life I live in the body, I live by faith in the one who gave himself for me. Galatians 2:20

Jesus started His ministry preaching, “Repent and believe the good news.” Mark 1:15 and I realize it isn’t only a one-time call to salvation, but an ongoing necessity in a walk of faith.


What truth do you have a hard time believing?


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