A few years ago, I met an amazing family (a dad, mom, and daughter) at the Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference. It was my first time attending a writer's conference, and my mom and I were completely clueless. I hadn't even made an appointment with any editors or agents, only because I thought there weren't any that represented my genre.
However, the Kauffmans immediately came to our rescue. They suggested that I sign up for appointments anyway, instructed me on how to do so, and kept my mom and I under their wing the entire conference. To put it short--if it wasn't for them, I would not have met my publisher.
With that being said--I am so happy to announce that this family has now founded a publishing company, Lighthouse Bible Studies. Their books,
Setting Things Right and
Winning the Victory, were published exactly a month before mine. How crazy is that?!
So, with the college finals this week, I thought now would be the perfect time to have BeeBe Kauffman visit my blog and share how she overcomes stress.
Beebe Kauffman is a co-founder of Lighthouse Bible Studies. She has a bachelor's degree in business, but her heart is in teaching the Bible. She has developed application-based studies for the New Testament books (except Revelation which is event-based) and for Isaiah, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Daniel in the Old Testament. Isaiah: Setting Things Right is her first written study.
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"Stress" is the word that will be written across the year 2013 in my memory. It began when my mom passed away in January. It was difficult to grasp the reality that she is no longer here, and it was hard to see all of her treasures being dispersed from her home. Then we had to do some work on her house to get it ready to sell. We had a few bumps along the way as we were trying to find contractors. A few weeks later, we started a new business, and not many of the scores of details were accomplished easily. We had learning curves, roadblocks, time delays, and a few "you-can't-do-this-before-you-do-that" detours. As the year rolled along, a few surprises were mixed in. I was getting overwhelmed.
One morning in my prayer time a thought that has helped me came to mind--"Use the stress release valves." I was more than willing to try anything, so I made a list of what those release valves might be: trust in God, prayer, praise songs, hope that God will make things better, reading Scripture, breaking a sizable task down into achievable steps and using them to sneak up on the goal, and looking at little problems from the big picture of life so the problems stay little in my mind. I also thought of three more: clean something and watch the sparkle for a few minutes, tickle someone and listen to the giggles, and sow some "happy" for someone.
When the pressures, pace, and problems of life crowd in around us a little too tightly, let's use one or more of the stress release valves to find a little relief.
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What do your "stress release valves" look like? Do you have any that you would like to add to the list?
