Well, today’s challenge was supposed to be me changing my title and tagline to something better, but I’m really happy with it. It captures the spirit of my blog, so I’ll stick with what I have.

I will, however, tell you why I chose it.

“My Journey To Freedom From Anxiety” was the title I chose not because my goal is to be anxiety-free (there is no such thing), but because I know that there is freedom from it. I know I can break the chains of my mental illness and live a full life of happiness.

Because this is a faith-based blog, I have to ask myself this question out loud: Can’t God heal any ailment? Why doesn’t he cure me of my mental illness? That’s where my tagline comes in.

“Overcoming anxiety and learning to live without it” has become my mantra because of the key word “overcoming.” Not curing. Overcoming. There’s a stark difference.

Curing means you get rid of your mental illness completely, as if it were never there. As if it were a common cold and the virus has left your body. Mental illness doesn’t work like that. Sometimes God allows us to go through tribulations and troubles so that we can grow and become stronger (e.g. the “refiner’s fire”). Mental illness, I believe, is my personal struggle.

And it has made me stronger. I am a far stronger person now than I was before my mental illnesses were diagnosed. To me, I am working on overcoming them. They are a hurdle that is in my way. They don’t go away once I jump over them. There are more hurdles to come. But they don’t keep me from running. They are a skip. A blip. A spike on the heart monitor. They let me know I am alive.

Learning to live without the chains of anxiety may seem like an easy task, but it isn’t. I wrote about my struggle to figure out what my life would be after overcoming my anxiety in a post called The Old Made New. When mental illness has been such a big part of your life, how do you learn to live without it? How do you close up the gaping hole it has left in you?

So there are two purposes of my title and tagline. First, to overcome. Second, to learn how to live my life after I overcome.

It’s a work in progress. But I am making progress, and I’m going to make it all the way.