I just finished my first week as Primary President at church. The Primary is the children's organization of the church. It's a fantastic organization--and being the president is a whole lot of work.
You'd think that a 4 day weekend would mean a little bit of R&R from the crazy hustle and bustle of life, but alas, this weekend it was not so. Looking back, I think it was probably one of the most stressful we've had in a long time.
Today, I am left to pick up the pieces. There are countless hours of sleep I will never make up. There are loads of laundry that are starting to back up. There are kids who haven't had enough attention. There are projects that have been ignored. There is bread that needs to be made. There are toilets that need to be scrubbed.
When life gets hard, and overwhelming, and almost to the breaking point, I am one who knows that one of the first things you do to deal with it is to start counting your blessings. Last night before I went to sleep, I was reflecting back on the weekend we had. It wasn't horrible, but I started feeling a lot of guilt for all of the things left undone, and for all the stress that was everywhere. And I thought... for someone as happy as I am, I sure am unhappy right now.
Today I slept in. If you can call sleeping until 5:00 sleeping in. Yes, it means I didn't make it to the gym. I still feel like I've been hit by a semi, I'm so tired. I may even go back to bed in a while.
Most of the time, I will agree that you should let nothing stand in the way of getting your exercise and taking that time out to accomplish those goals. Today, I have to say that taking care of yourself, and your health, and your overall well being, also means getting enough sleep, and trying to keep the stress out of your life as much as you can. Relax. Simplify.
My quest for today is to figure out how to make peace with everything I have going on. To keep myself from getting so stressed out that everyone around me suffers for it. I know that the Lord did not call me to be the Primary President so that I could lose my grip on life--rather, as I serve Him in this capacity, I am blessed with the extra blessings I need to not only keep up on what I had going on before, but to be able to do it better. So I know that requires some extra effort on my part as well.
Today I am going to work on getting to a more peaceful place. Unfortunately, at first, that means a little extra work, but I'm okay with that. Today I am going to watch some webinars for work, catch up on the laundry (which should actually be only 2 loads), make some Christmas presents, and spend some time with my kids. Two of my bathrooms also need some desperate attention.
I am also going to schedule in some breaks. I can be relentless when I get going, not wanting to rest until everything is done--I just rest so much better when it's all done! But I really think that going all day like that, no breaks at all, exhausts me to the point where I become snappy and stressed.
I know I can't be the only one out there who has had to figure out how to manage all the potential stress. What are your tricks? What have you figured out? How do you do it all?
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