It is one thing to write about taking life and it comes and going with the flow like a river, but it is entirely different when you have to do it. I write all the time about embracing life and taking the difficult part of life. I write about going with the flow when the unexpected happens. Yet when it does, I still struggle.
Today is the first day of the month. It is the busiest day of the month for me where I work. There was a computer problem with one of the programs as soon as I started to work this morning. I took it in stride. I found a way to work around it. Then, the internet went out and now I can’t work at all until it comes back. I don’t have access to my computer programs, bank websites, or emails. It feels like everything that could go wrong today is going wrong and I don’t have any control over it.
When it happens, I wish I could say I have a good response to it. However, the truth is I have the instinctual response that everyone does to stress. My muscles get tight. I feel my breathing get rapid. My hands start to shake. There’s more adrenaline in my system. My body is getting ready to fight or to run. For me, instead, the blood vessels in my head start to constrict and I get a headache. I also find myself without an outlet for the fight and with no where to run turning the response inward, I feel everything implode. The implosion feels exactly like it sounds all that energy that is built up from the adrenaline is turned on me. It feels like a body slam right into my chest. My arms, chest, and face all feel like some professional wrestler just ran straight at me and connected right dead center on my chest.
I think the part makes it so bad is my OCD. Because it really does feel like everything is going wrong. As one thing piles on another, it just loads on me. I feel it weighing me down. I keep thinking it is just going to keep getting worse and wondering what I did to make it happen. I know that’s an OCD thought, but when it feels like everything is wrong, it’s hard not to listen.
The best way out is to turn to faith. It’s two-fold. First, I have to take a leap of faith and believe that it is just a little bump in the road. Even though it feels like everything is wrong, I have to believe it isn’t. It might feel like the sky is falling, but God tells me it isn’t. So for just a little while, I have to take that leap of faith and believe Him. Soon, I will see that He was right.
The second leap of faith is knowing it isn’t my fault. Most people want to judge the events of their life as good or bad. They want to take credit thinking they had control of what happens in their lives, when most of the time, they don’t. I don’t have any control over whether there was an outage in the Internet service, and it really isn’t a bad or good thing. It just is. The only thing I really have control over in this situation is whether I am going to freak out over it or put the situation in God’s hands. Both choices are challenging. In the past, I have made both choices. I have to admit today it is a little bit of both. I am struggling.
However, realizing that if I take these leaps of faith, then maybe God can guide me through this situation. Maybe it won’t be so anxiety provoking. Maybe I can see it as it is: my routine has been disrupted. When that happens, the OCD feeling of wrongness goes crazy and I want to do anything and everything to fix it, but when it is something out of my control, I can’t fix it. I just have to take that leap of faith and believe that despite that feeling everything is going to be okay because God tells me so. That’s what faith is.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
