Stress Overload

Last night I thought I was having a heart attack. I have heart problems so that may be in the cards for me someday, but it took me by surprise to feel that amount of pain in my chest. Turns out it was a Charlie horse-in the left side of my chest over my heart. I have been doing weights again after taking a few years off from it. I think that's what set it off. But the stresses in my life right now could have done it as well.

Doing Fine and Grateful for it!

EVERY single person I know right now is dealing with huge things. That is life, and the further I get into adulthood, the more I realize that the stresses get bigger, last longer, and keep coming.  After a little melt down in front of my boss today, I was forced to confront the fact that some of the stresses in our lives are self induced. Don't get me wrong, life comes at you fast, and some stuff just happens. Tragedies and trials can just show up out of nowhere and make themselves right at home. Poop happens. That's all there is to it.

There are quite a few times when the unkindness of others causes me great stress. I  pray that I am never that mean person, and if you should ever view me as this way, by all means call me out on it. I will do my best to remedy the situation. For all practical purposes my goal in life is to teach my children that there will always be someone to deal with that is behaving in a way we don't understand, and I will encourage them to take the high road and try to be kind regardless. I will do my best to be a person who is kind and understanding. That being said, the dynamics between people that I care about and people who tend to act mean will continue to stress me out. I'm working on that. And I do concur that "thoughtless" is not the same thing as "mean".

As far as the things we do to stress ourselves out, I think that most of us realize at least some of those things in our lives. Over-scheduling, procrastinating, over-thinking, over-analyzing...that kind of thing. I am good at taking on problems that are not mine and trying to help or figure them out. I have also been known to take a frustration that I have and even though it is not in my control to change it, I let it bug me. These are two of the things that were nagging in the back of my mind while my boss sat there and patiently waited for me to quit babbling and pull myself together. Some of the issues that had me worried today were physical things I am dealing with and big, heavy worries about people in my life that I care about. These were rational things to be worried about, as I care about my health and the well being of others. The other things on my mind were either things that I had agreed to do and was worrying about (over-booking myself) or things that someone higher than myself had the power over, when I had no power over them at all. In other words, I made some of those stresses myself, and the other stresses were not ones I needed to be worried about just then.

I learned a lot today. I will allow that I will probably do the same dumb things over and over again...I am a kind person (a yes-girl as well) and someone who worries about others. But realizing habits will sometimes spark at least a little change that can keep getting bigger if we let it. Hopefully I have started down the road of understanding which stresses to allow myself to carry, and be able to start weeding out the other stuff. Yeah-rrriiiiiiigggghhhtttt.

From the playground, one of my favorite hours of my day.

The silver linings always lead to sunshine.

One last note; in nearly every situation that I was worried about today, I either gained perspective, it worked itself out, someone lent a hand to make it better, or I felt a blessing from Heaven to make the trial a little bit smaller for the time being. I am grateful for the tender mercies through any stress. I hope to be one to someone else during theirs.