CNN recently showed a female elephant in Sri Lanka repeatedly head-ramming a passenger van. Several handlers and tranquilizer guns were required to calm her. The diagnosis: over-stress.

Lately, I've felt like doing a little head-ramming myself. Work and family trips added 21,000 miles to my frequent-flyer account in two months. A week later, I slipped off a step after my son's wedding and severely fractured my left wrist. So I'm now sporting a metal immobilization device—not pretty or comfy. And I'm skipping right over the blizzard I was stuck in, as well as a few other minor stressors. I feel like I should be getting graduate-level credits for stress these days.

My recent experiences have been extreme, but stress is a normal part of life for each of us. If we don't have at least some level of stress, we're numb, unconscious or dead. And it can come from almost anything in our lives, good or bad. Financial reversals, relational conflict, serious illness and grief are some of the greatest stressors common to humans. Even getting married, starting a great new job or welcoming a child home from college are stressors. Each demands adaptation and change.

As humans (yes, even Christians) we often respond wrongly to over-stress. We don't always respond like the elephant, but we do get distracted, confused and discouraged. Or we may engage in self-destructive practices. Pornography, over-eating and substance abuse may evolve from a severely over-stressed life, causing harm to our relationships, our work and our witness.

So what should we do? God wants us to love Him and serve Him, but we are of little use to God or our neighbor when we are over-stressed. If we really want to live godly lives, we must commit to long-term self-care and balance. Managing our own stress enables us to walk closely with the Lord, and have compassion for others. The key is to recognize personal stressors and respond appropriately.

My friend Steve has taught me some good lessons about stress and coping resources. When we first met, Steve was a young family man who loved playing basketball with his friends. When we met next, he'd moved up into a leadership role. He had quit basketball in order to work longer hours mentoring others and developing strategies. With the loss of exercise and camaraderie of his basketball buddies, Steve was feeling the negative effects of an unbalanced lifestyle. And his stressors continued to increase.

Like Steve, most of us experience multiple stressors that can lead to that "stressed out" feeling. Alone, the child throwing a tantrum ahead of us in the checkout line or the neighbor complaining about her husband again should be tolerable. But they're never alone. They add to what we're already carrying around inside: disappointments, losses and pressures not dealt with. Together, they can push us toward ungodly thoughts and behavior.

Worried that he'd been promoted past his ability to cope and contribute, Steve slept poorly and felt like a failure at home and work. Steve was pleading with the Lord for relief but he wasn't getting a handle on his stress. Each day, his burden grew.

Then Steve began paying attention to his stress.

Studying our stress is one of the most important ways to free ourselves for better coping. Some of us can engage in self-talk that boosts our stress load; "If I don't do it, nobody will." "People need me to minister to them." "If life is hard, I just need to work harder." We confuse opportunity with God's call and raise the performance bar higher than we can reach, even tentatively, and certainly not as a lifestyle.

Together, Steve and I talked through a stress-and-resource audit (below), and he realized that dropping basketball had eliminated a primary stress reliever. So he determined to add it back into his schedule even if it meant dropping something that seemed more important. The benefits were so great that Steve continued to play basketball for many years, switching to swimming only recently.

As Christians, our best asset for managing stress is always present. The Holy Spirit lives inside us, ready to help. We can learn to detect stress and act on it. When we sense those "van-ramming" urges coming on, we should stop, breathe and pray, asking the Holy Spirit to make us wiser, to help us see with His sight.

Even Jesus didn't heal everyone. He retreated. He napped during the storm. He asked his disciples to stay near and pray. In a similar fashion, I try to rest and retreat, and I invite others to be near and pray. Sometimes I'm successful, sometimes not.

Right now, with my broken wrist, it means accepting abnormal physical limitations. It means typing one-handed, depending on others for more than usual and dropping some things I am especially good at.

It's always hard to balance a busy life. But learning to view stress as a friend who informs us can actually liberate us to create a more beautiful life and greater effectiveness.

Now if only we could teach elephants to do the same.

Stress Test by Sandra Auer Getting the Best of Your Stress PURPOSE: To help you engage intentionally with some of your stressors, reduce overall stress and fuel up for better functioning. TO BEGIN: Pray! Ask the Lord to escort you through this process of evaluating and responding to your stressors. Ask for creative thinking and release from the burden. Then, work the process, listening to the Lord as you go through the steps. 1. List your predominant stressors. Make a quick list of the things that are most burdensome to you right now. Don't order them; just get them on paper. 2. Quickly rate each one 1-10 according to the level of stress it is causing. 3. Review those with the highest ratings, considering ways to reduce their weightiness. Who can help? Is there something you can do to reduce the level now? If not, when? Schedule a time for tending those stressors that can be knocked out or reduced by applying resources. 4. Which stressors are impossible to eliminate? What resources can you apply to these? These might include exercise, prayerful meditation, rest or a new budget. NOTE: When you find yourself over-stressed again (and you will!), make another list and make plans for applying resources to the big ones. Simply listing and rating stressors helps you focus limited resources more effectively. Praying over your list is also a burden-lifter.