Letting Myself Be Sick

I think you know what I mean. When you felt sick days ago, but you just had to go to class, or had to go to work, or had to absolutely do something that day... then a week passes and you feel the same symptoms creeping up on you further. Yeah... it's like that. So today will be my sick day before my body shuts down on me at the most inopportune time.

I will admit I'm kind of excited to make some mac and cheese and play F.E.A.R, but I miss Sam and Christi already. I always see them on Wednesdays.

Alright so I'm here, what shall I talk about.

Let's talk about my anxiety. Since apparently that's what God is testing me in these days and will most likely to continue to test me in for years to come.

I am anxious about:

1. Being sick. Not my "aww I have a common cold" sick, but the "my body aches in the important lower regions of my body and I don't know why" sick. It's scary, but I'm trying every moment to not live in fear of what it may be.
2. Homework assignments. I'm doing them. They're getting done, I just don't know if I'm doing everything to my highest standard and ability. This performance pressure of mine won't let up it seems.
3. Graduate school. I finally made a break through and started my school's application. Such a huge step for me, because I have this tendency to let things pile up in my mind and freak out because the pile is so large... instead of actually doing something about the pile in real time.
4. Loving people. There are quite a few people that I want to (if I haven't already) pour my life out to in efforts to love them and be there for them. Maybe in my being a young Christian I'm expecting too much too soon. I feel like I'm not achieving anything, when in reality people's lives don't change over night, their mind sets don't change overnight, the insanity they view as normal or okay isn't merely going to leave upon me saying something to them or suggesting new ways to consider things. Loving people deeply is a walk. And walks like that take time and patience and love from God- not myself.

Lani told me something that I hadn't heard in a while in the context of me needing to give myself a break. He told me that I got dealt a mess from the very beginning of my life, that was just it and the way it was. I got older and realized it was a mess and have been busting my butt to climb my way out ever since. Working hard through school and working jobs, all things that call for performance in order for me to succeed.

Because that's how I operate, with this performance pressure mindset, it's like my default mode. I have to get it right or I run the risk of failing and being back where I started, where ever that might be. There is a healthy element to that I would assume, but it's so intensely manifest in me that it takes on a form of stress... and it turns physical.

Much of this comes down to me being able to trust God with my life... all of it. And somehow my brain wants to figure that pattern out too, what does it look like to trust God with my life? How do I know I'm doing it correctly? What if I'm doing it wrong? And all the aches I haven't felt since High School come back to haunt me. I had a really good streak of pain free months this past year, and I don't know where it all went. Probably disappeared around the time I realized God was angry at me about Truelove. Huh... I guess I didn't consider that until now, but that might be where all this stress started.

I just want to be able to trust God in everything I do. I just want to be able to live my life in such a way that I would not believe for a second that I have forgotten Him. But I also want to do it sanely, and not because I feel like I must impress Him (He is not impressed by the things I do). I want to obey Him and not have it appear to be me walking on eggshells. I want to love Him and not act like He'll leave me if I don't do it right. There is so much certainty and so much surety, so much security there. It always will be. I just want my mind, my body and my soul to act like it.

God is not my mother.

God is God. God is the Person that loves me so much He gave His only Son so that I may be able to have a life in Him... an everlasting life. I just need to remember that. It's okay if I don't know what that looks like right now, I will and Jesus will give me the grace to figure it out. I don't have to worry. Srsly. DON'T WORRY. I suppose that much of this comes from me not being able to bounce back when someone is frustrated or disappointed in me about something. I usually spend my time cowering in a corner and being afraid to do anything (walking on eggshells essentially), but with God I don't have to do that. I repent, I pray, I breathe and He hugs me and tells me to go on and behave. He does not want my dignity to be lessened and he does not want me to cower and be insignificant and useless in his sight. He wants me to be strong, humble, sweet, patient, and loving to live a life in Him that displays all of that naturally- not forced. So when I mess up I need to show remorse (upsetting God is NOT fun), but I can pick myself up and dust myself off and know that He has my back, He won't let me fall.

*phew* my anxiety talk in a nut shell. I really needed to share that and come to the conclusions I did.

Something else really random: So lately I have heard people make jokes about Jesus being zombie, and that the resurrection of souls is pretty much like a zombie apocalypse. Absurd, of course, but in my naive brain and in my naive thinking I became a little worried because I don't know what the Resurrection will look like, nor does anyone else. Again I know this is totally crazy, but bear with me there is a good ending to this thought avalanche. So this morning I read Mark 12 and I got to verses 24-27 and came to relief about such trite, silly thinking. haha Verse 27 Jesus ties this off with "He is not the God of the dead, but of the living; you are greatly mistaken." (NASB)

And underneath that it also helped me be confronted with another anxiety problem that I have that I chose not to mention earlier because it wasn't at the fore front. Marriage. Good heavens I'm ready to be. But obviously I'm not ready for it. The set of verses I point out paint a picture for me about where marriage should be in my hierarchy of concerns spiritually. Verse 25 Jesus says:"For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven." There is a life beyond this that Jesus explains so briefly, but so elaborately, that even marriage is obsolete within it. I hope to make it a task to place marriage in it's proper place- Below the desire to be in God's kingdom. That will probably rid me of a few problems along the way.

"You've been looking for a sign all this time, If you seek you'll find me every time."