How do we cope??

What does it mean to cope (coping)? According to Oxford dictionary, ‘coping is to deal with something difficult, effectively.’ How many of us are dealing with something difficult, but your way of coping is not allowing you to deal with it effectively? (I have been here many times in my life, way too many times in my life). How do we cope? I was told by many, that we are to give God our burdens and pray about whatever maybe troubling us. And I believed that to be true, but I also felt something was missing from that suggestion (especially as I got older).   To me the word prayer is a way of coping (because it is a way of dealing with something difficult). It is also a way to verbal say what is bothering us, in hopes, that the prayer itself would make the difficult situation go away. But that is not always true, in my opinion. Prayer itself is a form of a faith-based action. It is a way of putting our request, our questions, and our frustrations, out there and sending it on a spiritual wave that we can not see with the naked eye. So, when we do that, we are positioning our heart for an action to those things. But what happens when we do not see the actions to our prayers?? It is said to be that ‘faith without works, is dead’ so if prayer is a faith-based action, then our prayers also need actions from us, to show the effectiveness of it.   Example: I remember going through a really difficult time in my life... I would often find myself saying God I just do not understand. Why am I going through this? How can I change this? (to me this is my way of praying). I said this so much, but I was still going through the very things that got me to the place of questioning God, what it seemed like, every day. So, nothing was changing, and I was struggling, and had no idea of what to do. But, in hindsight, I mean I was coping, but not effectively.   This is why I said, just praying about it does not always change what you are going through, when you do not put forth an action behind that prayer. So, what did I do, during that really difficult time in my life? I researched online what can I do to stop being so depressed? Anxious? Paranoid? Hurt? First thing that came up was medications and talk to your physician and I knew these things to be true, but, I felt or created the idea in my head that if I tell my doctor then they are going to put me on medications. I did not want this. I wanted help to get through these things, not numb it. So, I went back to praying, but this time I said God I want help to understand why I am going through this. I then got a revelation to go to therapy.   Prayer is not the only way to cope, when you are still feeling like you are stuck. You then must turn that prayer up a notch and take another action. My next action was going online, which then followed going to scheduling an appointment for therapy. So how do we cope? We cope in many different ways, it is important that you find ways that help you come out of what you are facing and not just learn how to stay in what you are facing. A lot of us are coping to stay, but not coping to overcome. Here I talked about using prayer to cope and I started somewhere. But I needed more than just prayer. I needed an actual action of me doing something to show I do not want this for my life. So, therapy was my next step, and there man oh man…. the door of lex OPENED