White Knuckles

"Calm me, O Lord, as You stilled the storm.
Still me, O Lord, keep me from harm.
Let all the tumult within me cease.
Enfold me, O Lord, in Your peace."
- from Celtic Daily Prayer Book

I "brought work" home with me this weekend. Usually, I can just leave it all behind and not think about it (unless it's fun and exciting to think about, which is usually the case, as I love my job). But it's not even a full week into May and it's already a stressful month. I just made a list of things that HAVE to get done in the next week or two, and it's roughly at 18 items, and that's not including the normal weekly tasks required of me. One or two are simply emails that have to get sent, but others are much, much larger projects.

Usually, once I've created a list of all the stuff I have to do, I am fine. I know what has to get done first, what can wait till I'm working at the front desk, and what can honestly wait until next week. But the first initial week of this kind of heavy-on-the-crazy season is usually utterly stressful and sends me into a mind-clouding spin. And this last week was a doozy! Meeting up at headquarters, the catalog system changing which means I have to change an entire handout for the computer lesson I teach in two weeks, and then to cap the whole week I ended up having to do MATH...on the spot...in front of teenagers!...for two hours!! (ok, it was kinda fun, we were playing the game of Life, but infinitely more awesome cause it was "life-sized" and took up the whole programming area; but note to self - do not both play the game AND be the banker at the same time my already stressed brain cannot handle it!)

My poor coworkers started noticing how stressed I was when I couldn't string a normal sentence together at the beginning of the week. By Friday, it graduated into dysfunctional paragraphs. Thankfully I only worked for four hours this morning, and tried to avoid speaking unless I absolutely had to, for the sake of my poor coworkers and patrons.

[Bunny Trail: See it's like this in my brain: on a normal, calm, peaceful day, I already have an interesting time of making a complete, understandable sentence. I don't have a stutter or other speech impediment; the problem is I think too fast. By the time I start actually speaking, I'm working on the end of the thought, which in speech would take about 5-10 minutes to explain. So I have to stop mid-thought to remember how the thought began, in order to actually put it into words so that the person I'm talking to can follow along. Sometimes I'll even say phrases or sentences backwards - last night to a friend I literally said: "See you good," instead of: "It was good to see you." My brain was already at the end of the sentence so I said what I was thinking, then had to go back to add in the rest. This usually ends up with slight embarrassment on my part, and leaves me wondering if I have a mental problem (probably leaves other people wondering the same thing sometimes).

Honestly, this is why I don't talk to people a lot. I'm afraid that I'll say something that doesn't make sense. Usually around close friends this isn't a problem; honestly I tend not to actually think before I speak, I just start speaking, and it's most of the time it's ok. But with people I'm not as familiar with, the process goes as follows:

Step 1) think, usually in the form of pictures or ideas
Step 2) think with the intention of putting into words
Step 3) put thought into words.

Sadly, "thinking with intention to speak" takes a lot longer, so by the time I'm actually ready to say what it is I want to say, the moment to speak has passed and the current topic of conversation has nothing to do with what I was thinking.  This is why I love writing. I can take as long as I want to think then think to type then type, and you're not sitting there staring at me waiting for a reply. Which just causes me to stress out, which makes my thoughts more jumbled, which makes my sentences turn backward and my paragraphs into unfollowable gibberish. Speaking of stressing out...I think I was talking about that a few thought processes ago...end Bunny Trail.]

So work is piling up, not just tasks but responsibilities as well. My annoying bosses (slight sarcasm, they know I love 'em) tend to talk me up to other people in the library system, which leads to me being asked to be on special committees or to create brand new programs that other people in the system might use as well. While this is flattering, sometimes it just merely adds to the stress of what is already going on. And I don't really like a lot of recognition, so I get embarrassed and flustered and whoops, there goes my brain into a foggy mist again.

The prayer I wrote at the beginning of this (wow, extremely long) blog is one I always find myself praying when I'm stressed. Sometimes, like today, I can say it over and over again with no change. I've allowed the stress and the worry to completely take priority in my mind and heart, and no amount of rote memorization can alleviate that which I don't want to let go. Most of the time we human beings tend to think that stress takes hold of us and ruins our lives. But now that I think on it, I don't believe that's true. Yes, there are times in our lives that work and family and life can pile up and create a traffic jam of things clamoring for our attention. But we are the ones who grab on with white knuckles and don't let go.

Praying that prayer will only work if I allow myself to realize that I have to stop being the one trying to take control, because frankly, I suck at it. In the grand scheme of my life, I won't remember how stressed I was this week (unless I come back to read this blog in 30 years). In the grand scheme of the universe, no one will ever give a crap that I was mixing my words and sentences in 100 years. I'll be lucky if it was remembered that I existed at all. What does matter is that God's got me, and I am so important to Him that He doesn't want to see me battered by stress that I didn't have to deal with in the first place. So I pray that prayer, make my priority lists, read Isaiah 41:8-10 out loud over and over again, and slowly I find the stress slipping away, and my heart is at peace in His presence.


But you, Israel [Sara], My servant,
Jacob [Sara], whom I have chosen,
descendant of Abraham, My friend—
I brought you from the ends of the earth
and called you from its farthest corners.
I said to you: You are My servant;
I have chosen you and not rejected you.
Do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be afraid, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you; I will help you;
I will hold on to you with My righteous right hand.
Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)