THERE ARE NO PROBLEMS HERE! (Tenaciously Missional 2)

THERE ARE NO PROBLEMS HERE...

Just kidding. There have been so many small challenges that it is sometimes hard to figure out just what is bothering me. I am the type of person who tends to ignore impending doom like meme (the dog sitting in a burning building with fire.) I have dealt with stress my entire life, as family situations have not always been the best. I am slowly figuring out that my ways of dealing with stress are not always healthy. I tend to resort to humor via sarcasm and avoidance.

It is extremely easy for me to ignore my internal warning system until I completely loose it. This was me today getting midterms grades back. It was my first major meltdown since being in Paris. Sitting in Starbucks trying to laugh off my failures so I would not cry was not working very well. It was not necessarily the grades, but the knowledge of being so far behind. The stress of it all caught up. This was my breaking point.

It is interesting that the Lord would choose Paris, of all places, for me to work on this issue. In my mind I have been in much more stressful situations - working in management in a restaurant is no small feat. In fact, until recently I did not realize how abnormal my stress behaviors were. Who doesn't try and diffuse difficult situations with humor?

I believe that learning to immediately process stress and deal with the situation is going to help me immensely with my future endeavors. About a year and a half ago I felt like the Lord was telling me that he was going to take me from one stress level to another. This is not something you want to hear from the Lord. Over this time period I grew a lot as a person and am still growing. It did not occur to me that the Lord would use my time in Paris to process some situations from my past. It is time to stop ignoring the root of the problem and face situations

head on. It is time to face my Goliath.