Friday, February 13, 2009

The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

When I was a little girl, I loved the book "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day". I felt so bad for poor Alexander as seemingly everything went wrong. His day is so bad that he repeatedly says that he just wants to move to Australia. It seemed a silly story to me as a kid, but now as I am having a rough day of my own, I find myself remembering this book.

Everyone has bad days. That's a simple enough truth. Well these past few weeks, I've had them in spades. They just keep coming and coming. Last week I got my feelings hurt and spent the rest of the week reeling from it as I tried to adjust to a new schedule that made room for my new job, committee meetings for a few organizations, social time, schoolwork, and sleep. I spent much of last week playing catch up and was determined not to have a repeat.

That plan was an epic failure. With two days that I used have free for whatever I wanted now promised to my babysitting job, I am finding the adjustment to be a lot more difficult than I expected - a lot more difficult than it should be. I spent this entire week being behind on my schedule. A good bit of that is my fault. It's always hard for me to give up time with my friends for schoolwork and so I procrastinate on the schoolwork. The result is a stressed and frazzled self scrambling to finish the work in time.

Last night is an excellent example of this. I had to write a paper, which required some research, and the first draft was due this morning. I've know the topic for a week. I didn't really start on any aspect of the paper, including the research, until yesterday morning. Needless to say, I should have started much earlier. Because I didn't, I ended up staying up until one o'clock in the morning working on it and reading the assigned reading for the class. Two years ago, or even one year ago, if I told you that I was in bed by 1 a.m. that would mean that I got to bed at a "decent" time. Oh for the days when I could get by on five hours of sleep! Now I need eight hours. Well, I set my alarm, but forgot to turn it on and I missed my first two classes.

I feel so angry with myself. Any illusions I had of being an in control, hard working student have been completely stripped away. I am so discouraged. There is so much that I have to do, to improve myself and to get back on top of things. No matter how hard I try, though, I just can't seem to push myself past the laziness.

Maybe that's the point. Perhaps I can't do it and I'm not meant to. My strength will never be enough to make me successful at anything. I feel as if God is stripping away everything I love about myself and my life. Things and people that I treasure and cling to so much are slipping away. Deep inside me there is a voice that invites me to stop leaning on myself or others and lean solely on God. Still, I'm frightened to let go of the people and things that I love. I don't want to lose them. I'm not good at letting go. I know that I mustn't resist, but I want to very badly. I want to reach out to someone, any of my closest friends, but something stops me because I sense that I must deal with this alone.

I don't want to. I'm like a spoiled child resisting the will of her parents because she doesn't understand and because to a certain extent, doesn't want to. My fallen self resists what I am confident is God's hand working in my life. I hate growing pains. They make me ache all over. Like my fictional friend, Alexander, from the book, I want to run away. Maybe not to Australia, but to any place where I won't have to face this confusion, this pain, this loss, and my very self. Right now, when I look in the mirror, I don't like what I see - and I am not talking about body image. I am learning very tough truths about myself and how I live my life and I'm terrified to face them. To anyone who still reads this blog, please, please pray for me!'

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