Joyful Soul Counseling

12/12/2025

12/11/2025

Lord, teach me to breathe peace instead of panic.

Lord, my first response to stress is panic.

My chest tightens, my thoughts race, my breathing gets shallow, and suddenly I'm spiraling.

I need You to retrain my nervous system, to rewire my response.

Teach me to breathe in Your peace before anxiety takes over.

Help me pause, slow down, and inhale trust instead of fear.

When panic knocks, let peace answer the door.

Give me the discipline to stop, breathe, and remember that You're in control, before my body and mind go into crisis mode.

Let peace become my default, not my last resort.

12/10/2025

The reason so many of us feel anxious and depressed is that we've made our joy dependent on our circumstances.

But you can choose to have the kind of joy that doesn’t rise and fall with the market, the news, your health, or the opinions of others.

We can choose joy in the middle of our pain, and even when circumstances don’t change. We can choose joy because God’s love never fails.

For years, I lived with constant, severe back pain. Surgeries, treatments, and endless hours lying flat left me drained and discouraged. In the middle of that season, I realized something had slipped away. I’d lost my joy.

Then God brought me to a passage of Scripture that changed everything. I discovered joy isn’t something you wait for when life gets better. It’s something you choose, even when life hurts.

My prayer is that you will discover the same freedom I did: that joy is possible, not after the struggle, but in the very middle of it.

12/09/2025

Beneath every behavior there is a feeling. And beneath each feeling is a need. And when we meet that need, rather than focus on the behavior, we begin to deal with the cause, not the symptom.
~Ashleigh Warner

12/03/2025