What Would You Do?

Wow I have missed blogging.
December is not usually my month. I get stressed to the point that I feel like I'll go insane. The butterflies refuse to leave my stomach, I cry, my chest tightens, I think so much I end up staring at something for a few minutes. I hope no one has seen me doing this. I can't make myself relax. My chest will be tight until this Saturday at 11:30.  Looking back at past Decembers I had nothing to worry about. I really didn't because in the end it all worked out. I'm praying that this December is no exception. Yesterday was my breaking point. The dam burst, the animals went wild, the flood came etc. I wanted to scream. I didn't feel like I was doing enough. That I wasted time and was lazy for the two weeks and I wanted to scream. Right now my house is full of tension. My brother is taking tests for his potential job, I have finals and my parents are dealing with Christmas. Everyone is on edge.
Then we got some bad news. We found out that someone from my family's church had passed away. Craig was basically my brothers third grandfather. He and his wife Ruth were basically a part of the family. They would always talk to us and make us laugh after church.
Guilt immediately set in. I stopped going to church and I wish I could share the reasons why I stopped but I can't. I tried to write a blog post about it but I couldn't make myself post it.  I'm not ready to talk about it. This means I haven't seen Craig or Ruth in forever. I started kicking myself for not going. It's not like I could have predicted this. That didn't make me feel any better though.
This morning I woke up feeling exhausted, my entire body ached. Never ever take a seven AM class. Never. When I got home I sat in the recliner and looked out the window. We have a bird feeder right outside and it seems like the birds are always there. I immediately thought about my youth leader, Blair. Blair loves birds, he always seemed to bring them up. He found God in the birds and I loved that. He asked me once, "What would you do if today was your last day?" It's a simple yet loaded question.
I don't think about that as much as I should. That question puts life into perspective. All the things that I am stressed out about suddenly don't matter. If I'm being realistic this is what I would do...
I would read, books are my life, love language, best friends etc. Not being able to read has been a huge contribution to my stress. I love to read, I love that I am able to escape from the real world. I finally started to read last week. I had gone to the library to get 'a book'. I ended up getting three books. Since library books come with due dates I knew I had to start reading. I wasn't pushing away my responsibilities. I was doing what I needed to do to stay sane. I normally feel guilty for reading. I now realize that's like a diabetic saying, "I feel really guilty for taking my medication." Books are my medicine. I felt guilty for reading and I shouldn't have. I asked myself, "Who reads two books this close to finals? You're not working hard enough."
In other words I felt that I needed to work for my worth. That is an endless and exhausting race that no one wins. It never ends. I was completely ignoring the fact that I had enjoyed reading. I loved being able to escape from my own life. Enjoying life is not a bad thing. Taking time to not do work is not a bad thing. There is so much more important things in life than working. I'm slowly but surely learning that.
DFTBA
-AB

Fiona's quote of the day:
(From forever ago).
"Just spent $150 dollars of my meal dollars on muscle milk because I couldn't afford protein." -A guy that should study more and work out less.