Springing Into Alignment

If you have been feeling crushed by the weight of too much stress from the first quarter of 2026, you are not alone. We tend to look at the new year as a time to get our lives in order and correct any mistakes from the year prior. We set intentions and goals, buy all the things to get organized and healthy, plan trips, etc… While the new year is a chance to start over and do better, human nature can trap us into thinking it’s a race to get all our ducks in a row as fast as we can as soon as the starting pistol is fired at midnight. Some of us might even think we get a head start if you can just kick the proverbial race off with a kiss from that special someone.

The problem with this mentality, while good intentioned, is that the Bible really only tells us to race in terms of submitting in obedience to the Lord. We should race to secure our salvation by accepting Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. We should race to share the gospel with others every chance we get that nudge from the Holy Spirit. We should race to live our lives in accordance with the scriptures, and God’s word continually tells us to slow down. In God’s perfect goodness, he designed our bodies, minds and souls and gave us the handbook to take care of them.

Recently, my body experienced something I never have before that was a real wake up call that I was living out of alignment with God’s desire for His children to live in peace. I began having a sore stiffness in my neck and shoulders that I chocked up to just sleeping funny as a 30-something. It really bothered me for a weekend and culminated with paralyzing pain that Monday morning that hurt so much it scared me. I saw a nurse practitioner and chiropractor that day who both said the same thing. My body couldn’t take any more stress and everything inside was so inflamed that it was causing pressure on my nerves. This really wasn’t too surprising because it seemed like everything had been on my nerves lately. My patience had been gone for a while and my capacity for handling any more stress was non existent.

“‘Woe to the obstinate children,’
    declares the Lord,
‘to those who carry out plans that are not mine,
    forming an alliance, but not by my Spirit,
    heaping sin upon sin;

-Isaiah 30:1

In February, I was invited to share the gospel at a Christian women’s conference whose target audience this year was non-believers. Leading up to the this event, I carried the emotional weight of the six year anniversary of my husband’s death and the intrusive thought that I have been a widow now for as long as I was a wife. I felt overwhelmed at work, behind at home, and like I was failing as a mother with this solo parenting gig. I felt like I didn’t even have a moment alone with the Lord to pray about what He wanted me to share or a chance to work on what I was going to say until the week of the event. That’s when my youngest daughter broke her wrist, my oldest daughter came down with the flu, and a burned bowl of ramen noodles caused extensive fire damage to our back patio. As I shared my misfortunes with friends and coworkers, I joked that since I was preparing to share the gospel, the devil was fighting me hard.

Pride had me considering the enemy attack to be a privilege-a sign that my testimony was a threat worth attacking. In reality, my body, with every single cell intricately coded by our Creator, was attacking itself because I was working overtime to manage everything my way instead of slowing down and fully trusting that God’s way is always better. The Lord will never bless what he did not align and since I had been rushing through my quiet prayer time, in God’s perfect design of creation, my body finally screamed at me that I was out of alignment. It also came as no surprise that when I paused to surrender everything I had been doing to His will, I was overcome with peace and my body was healed. The Lord desires for us to live in peace and to align ourselves to receive His greatest blessings.

I’m sure there are many of us who are starting to feel the stress of falling behind of where we thought we would by now. We haven’t met those resolutions from January or we are coming back from a spring break that didn’t feel like a break at all and are bracing ourselves to head into the next season already burned out. It’s possible we are competing with timelines we only set for ourselves or trying to balance things like work, relationships, or schedules that were never ours to steward. We are fighting to create and keep plans that aren’t God’s desire for us and are keeping us out of alignment for receiving His blessings and peace. I want to end with the encouragement that God certainly has good plans for you, but you need to align yourself with His will in order for them to unfold. If you are living in a season of high stress, it might be a sign that it is time to slow down to assess the cause of your worldly stressors and tune in to what the Lord is actually asking you to carry into the next season because His way will never fail to be better.

Love, Molly

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