Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only €10,99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Pressing Forward
    Pressing Forward
    Pressing Forward
    Ebook126 pages1 hour

    Pressing Forward

    By April Poynter

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Has fear invaded your life? Are you suffocating under the pressure of being known and being enough?
    Good News!
    You Do Not Have to Live Under the Oppression of Fear and Anxiety When It Comes to Living an Authentic Life.
    It’s easy to lean on your faith when things are going well, and even when things are just a little tough. But when you’re living with a false identity, the pressure increases, day after day, week after week. Small defeats chip at the false version of you until the weight feels like a mountain pressing down with no relief. In those times, faith feels complicated and is hard to come by.
    I’m a Christian. I wholeheartedly follow Jesus. I enjoy studying scripture and gathering women together to learn more about the mysteries of the Bible. But when I encountered a season marked by fear, anxiety, panic attacks, and depression, I was scared and confused. I thought I was equipped. I thought I had the answers. I was wrong. As I continued to wage war against anxiety, I found that I was actually waging war to rescue my truest self. Anxiety was a byproduct of not living authentically.
    April Poynter suffered from General Anxiety Disorder for an entire year. The ordeal was so intense that at one point she even contemplated suicide. Yet at the bottom of the pit, and at the end of herself, the Truth of God’s word began to press through her feelings and embedded itself into her heart. Perfect Love was found at the bottom of the bottom.
    “I overcame the darkest battle of my life by pressing forward.” April declares. “And so can you!”

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWordCrafts Press
    Release dateNov 16, 2017
    ISBN9781370451630
    Pressing Forward

    Related to Pressing Forward

    Related ebooks

    Christianity For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related categories

    Reviews for Pressing Forward

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Pressing Forward - April Poynter

      Pressing Forward

      Pushing Through Fear and Anxiety

      to Find My Truest Self

      by

      April Poynter

      Published by WordCrafts Press for Smashwords

      Copyright © 2017 April Poynter

      Front cover concept by Tony Poynter

      Cover design by Johnathan Grisham

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite online retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Contents

      Dedication

      Introduction

      one

      two

      three

      four

      five

      six

      seven

      eight

      nine

      ten

      eleven

      twelve

      thirteen

      fourteen

      about the author

      dedication

      This book is dedicated to my husband, Tony.

      You are a man of action married to a woman who loves words. You’re steady and still while I tear up the world. Thank you for letting me fly freely even when you don’t understand an intuitive-feeling, right-brain creative.

      To Trinity, my beloved. You are the reason I kept living during my season of deep rooted anxiety and depression. I’m grateful for you and your explosive excitement for life.

      To Sway, my always little baby. You live life outside the box. I admire you tremendously. You have taught me so much more in your four years of life than I could have ever learned on my own.

      introduction

      There was a long pause as I sat in the car with the phone up to my ear. I felt so much anxiety fill my body.

      That’s exactly it, Tony, I said to my husband as excitement and fear jolted through me. We say we’ll do whatever and go wherever to bring hope and healing to others. We say we’ll go wherever God wants to send us and yet we hold on to our safety post. We allow Him to navigate our lives as long as we get to hold on to our safety post. Yesterday I prayed that God would open me up and remove anything that’s not from Him. I asked Him to remove anything that’s hindering me. I know He’s saying it’s time to let go. I’m pressing forward, babe.

      Tony was silent. So was I.

      I had devoted my life to Jesus for five years at this point. I was head over heels in love. I was all in.

      I had a cold. I had been coughing my head off for two weeks and about to see the doctor. There were a few minutes left to wrap up my conversation before my appointment. I took a wheezy breath, coughed, and said, I don’t want this safety or control anymore. I’m letting go.

      ~

      I got fired from my job. I had only worked there for three months. Everything was going great until I decorated my office and put a photo of my, at the time, three-year-old daughter on the desk.

      My boss walked by to see the decor and scoped out the picture. Your daughter is cute, he said. She’s so brown. Is your husband brown?

      ‘What the...?’ I thought. I’m sure my face portrayed exactly what I was thinking.

      Are you asking me if my daughter is biracial? Yes, he said.

      I responded, She is biracial. Oh, cool. She’s cute, he said.

      From that day forward my boss stopped talking to me. We had connected so well since I had started working there. We had daily meetings. And now, he was saying nothing to me and avoiding me at all costs. A coworker shared that he was racist, but I didn’t believe it. He just didn’t seem like the racist type. But something was definitely off. I confronted him head-on. Are you treating me different because my husband is black and I’m white?

      He acted appalled. How dare you ask me that?

      I’m just asking. You have not been the same toward me ever since you saw the picture of Trinity on my desk and found out she was biracial. What changed?

      Nothing. I’m just busy, he said.

      The next day he fired me. Oh, sorry. He laid me off.

      This is what sparked my conversation with my husband about letting go and trusting God even when we couldn’t understand. I was still processing the termination and the grounds for termination. I was told it was because my role and the Director of Operations’ role were pretty much the same thing, there was no need for both of us. I had been married to Tony for six years, and to my knowledge had never experienced discrimination for being in an interracial relationship.

      Prior to this job, I had been a stay at home mom for six months after being let go from a company that was literally shut down by the IRS and FBI for fraud, money laundering, and a lot of other stuff you hear about in the news, but never really ever happens to you. Well, it happened to me.

      I had left a job of five years for this great opportunity, just to get five months in and have the FBI raid my place of employment. All of us employed by this particular company learned we had no health benefits, even though premiums had been coming out of our pay checks, and that we were all terminated - effective immediately - because the company didn’t exist anymore.

      Yeah, so that happened.

      Six months after being unemployed, my husband and I decided it was time for me to go back to work to help our family financially. I went back to work just to get laid off three months later because my daughter was brown. On top of the stresses that come along with being unemployed and the grief of discrimination, I had this stupid cold that wouldn’t go away.

      ~

      I hung up the phone with my husband, and just sat in the

      car for another minute. I felt peace about letting go. I didn’t want to just say that God was Lord over my life; I wanted to actually let Him be Lord over my life and let Him lead me. I went into my appointment and shared my concerns about my cough and chest congestion. What happened next stopped my life completely for the next year, and altered me forever. The doctor did her routine vitals check. You know the drill; Open your mouth, stick out your tongue, say, aaahh. I figured she would feel my glands, check my blood pressure, write a prescription and I’d head home. She did all the routine checks, but when she checked my blood pressure, a confused look crossed her face.

      Hm, she said. Let me see your other arm.

      I stretched out my left arm and she checked my blood pressure, again. She looked perplexed.

      Your blood pressure is really high, she said. We’ll want to keep an eye on that.

      She then told me I had a virus and it would need to run its course. I walked out of the office. As the door closed behind me a single thought was stuck in my mind; Your blood pressure is really high.

      I had never been told anything was wrong with me. Ever. In fact, I had worked very hard to please and perfect just to avoid anyone ever telling me something was wrong with me in regard to any and all areas of my life.

      I pondered what it could mean as I stood outside in the parking lot digging my keys out of my purse. I drove to the daycare to pick my daughter up, when I realized I didn’t have a snack or juice for her - an absolute necessity for a peaceful ride home. I stopped by the Rite-Aid near her daycare. As I skimmed the junk snack aisle, trying to decide between Gold Fish or Doritos, I suddenly felt like I couldn’t breathe. The more I tried to catch my breath, the harder it was to breathe. My vision grew hazy. I felt as though I would black out. I threw down the Gold Fish and Doritos, ran out of the store and sat on a bench nearby.

      My heart was racing. My palms were sweating. I was shaking and still having a hard time breathing. I called my husband and told him something was wrong with me and I needed to go home immediately. I could not get our daughter from school. Something was seriously wrong. He agreed to pick our daughter up and told me to go home and rest.

      I drove home. It

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1