Lifestyle Purge

So about every year around this time, I find myself reevaluating my life and my lifestyle, this year is the first year I am doing this as a married woman, and also as someone who is moved out of state and away from home. There were many new things this year for me and I have to admit I wished someone had told me not only is the first year of marriage hard, if your moving out of state, and elbows deep in ministry it's going to be even harder, there is going to be a lot of new things thrown at you at once. Personally I think when someone in my place in life get's married and moves away from home it should come with a free counselor for the year on call 24/7. I love my husband but it doesn't make it easy leaving.

Anyways, I have been dealing with alot of anxiety attacks and a few panic attacks even (yes there is a difference). The other night my husband worked from 2pm till midnight, not getting home to me till close to 1 am. In that time I made the huge mistake of looking through facebook and seeing all the negative posts, all the horrible news in the world and it overwelmed me and scared me. I went into a frenzy of an anxiety attack and had no one there to talk me down or to pray me through it, I was on my own for the first time. So I tried my best to breathe, and pray and say scripture over me, my favorite is "Though I fear, I trust in the Lord" and with time I eventually got to a normal breathing pattern. Then the Lord pressed upon me that I needed to look at my lifestyle and revealuate the choices I have been making, and take a personal inventory of my life, especially now as a married woman in ministry.

From that I gained alot of perspective, and I have to say these past four days have been amazing! Trying but for sure amazing!!! Here are some of the things I changed and my perspective on why I changed them, these are merely what I felt pressed upon me, each person is different though.

1. Remove Facebook and Messenger from my phone: Through praying and thought, I was brought to the realization that every time an axiety attack was triggered at night it was after checking and reading facebook, by removing the convience of it being on my phone to scroll through and read, I remove the negativity from being an hourly convience, and instead save it for times when I am on the laptop (which is a lot less than most would believe). From that I not only removed the urge to be on facebook when bored or unable to sleep, it also allowed me to stretch my brain more, read more in my books, talk to God more and really focus on Him. Social media can be fun but there needs to come a limit and a line drawn in the sand, if your picking up your phone to check facebook more than your Bible it's time to change!!!
2. Sort through and remove movies: This is a random one, I don't have many movies that would be deemed inappropriate by most, but I do have quite a few, and so I pulled them off the shelves, and I was surprised by how many still had wrappers on them, (over half) and most of them I literally held wondering "Why in the world do I have this movie?" So without thinking I pulled them off the movie shelf and threw them into a garbage bag.
3. TV Limitations: I have been finding having a smart tv that has netflix and amazon prime and on demand with regular tv that watching tv was to big of a convience, and I needed to cut some tv out of not just my life but my husband's life, we were getting so caught up in watching tv I couldn't remember the last time we had tea and just talked. So we made a few rules:
1. NO watching the news, yes we need to be informed however watching the news is purely panic driven and half the time repeated for a few days straight, we check the news on our phones each afternoon and that's it.
2. No watching tv from 9:30pm on: We sometimes will bend the rule if we both have off and will be up later but if it's a night where bed is going to happen at 10:00pm we try to cut off the tv as early as possible so we can focus on reading, each other, and just being content in the quiet. 
3. No tv before supper: We were letting what we watched dominate what we talked about when we ate, and sometimes even dictate when supper would be ready by removing tv we were able to enjoy our day better and not have as much being put into our minds. 
4. If one of us is uncomfortable with the show, it does't get watched
4. Fighting Fear with Peace: I read recently in a new book I started that in the scripture Jesus has conquered everything and that there was nothing to fear but God Himself. So with that I kept in mind that though I fear I need to put it aside and understand that Jesus lives within me and therefore I should have no reason to fear because the Lord who lives within me has already conquered all my fears. 
1. That being said I need it to be known yesterday I went out to eat with my husband and there were 2, not 1 but TWO seagulls two cars away from me and I got out of the car and walked into where we were eating without crying or screaming (I am terrified of sea gulls). this is a big moment for me, and probably for my husband to, there have been moments he had to leave a good parking spot solely cause of the birds.

So there you have it some new guidelines I have instilled and hopefully this inspires you to possibly take a life inventory, honestly we all have flaws so there is always something we should be working on!