Managing Stress through Prayer

Prayer Can Help Us Manage Stress

What is stress?
Stress is any situation which can trigger an increase in our blood pressure
and make our breathing shallow and quite restricted. In today's working
environment, stress is a normal experience. Actually, we need a certain
amount of stress to be able to work more efficiently and more productively
due to the challenges that we need to take in our home life and professional
life which impose themselves upon us. However, if the stress is way above
manageable levels, then this is very dangerous. According to many psychologists
and those involved in psychotherapy, a normal human person can at most take in
two big stressors (situations of stress) a day. More than two big stressors
and it will definitely affect the health of the person.

Prayer is a way to handle stress
When we pray, we usually exercise the gift of faith the Lord gives us. And
when we pray with faith, we know that the Lord will provide anything we need,
help us solve our problems, heal our sickness, help us cope with our money
issues, grant us the strength to do what we must do and a host of many other
needs that we may have. Through prayer, we have access to Someone who can
be in control of everything that is causing whatever disorder, confusion,
chaos, or conflict that is happening in our lives. Thus, with our faith
truely placed in a God who will save us, we can lower the level of stress
we are experiencing.

What kind of prayer can help relieve stress?
Although any kind of prayer can help us relieve stress and strengthen our
resistance to it, the best form of prayer that can lower the levels of
stress we are experiencing in our lives is the meditational form of prayer.
When we, for example, visit the adoration chapel and quiet ourselves and
affectionately gaze on the presence of God in the Blessed Sacrament, this
will surely lower the level of stress we are experiencing. For one thing,
sitting down, keeping still, and being quiet, is already an activity that
will make our breathing deeper, lower our blood pressure, and attune more
our bodies toward prayer. Once we begin to pray, then the Lord makes His
healing presence be more felt in our body and soul.

Keeping a disciplined prayer life
If we keep to a disciplined prayer life, then we are assured that we can
handle on the average the stressors that can unexpectedly happen in our
day to day living. A disciplined prayer life helps us to focus greatly
on a God who is in control of things and who only wants what is good for
all of His children. It is when we forget this important truth that we
succumb to the stressors that happen to us and we become its victims thru
the sickness or emotional wounds that they inflict. A disciplined prayer
life helps us to always remember that God is the author of life and that
He wants to save all of us from anything that is bad. And if ever anything
bad still happens, by our faith in Him through prayer, we know that He will
still turn it all for the good.

Dennis-Emmanuel Cabrera
February 17, 2005

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