Take Life and Stress and Still Smile

Good day my friends.
Recently I’ve been so very stressed out about a lot of things. If I list them you might laugh, but for me personally, they are quite big things, so I’m going to list them anyway. XD

• School. I’m working really hard and investing a lot of my day into doing my senior year of school. I’m really pressing to graduate by the New Year, but it’s not going to happen. It was hard to accept I think. I was disappointed. I’m required to have 280 hours of Physical Education, and I had been tracking them well, thinking I had only 65 hours left. This week I went back and recounted so that my mom could send them in to our curriculum, and turns out I actually need 113 more hours. Which there isn’t a realistic way for me to get this in before the New Year. So I had to let that go.
• My book. Dewdrops and Butterflies is so amazing. I don’t know if I’ve shared this with you all before, but this book was a gift from God into my hands. I’ve been seeking Him in everything and He’s been guiding in every single step. Except as soon as I sent the files to my alpha readers, I was so stressed because it’s taking so long to get it done. I can’t pressure them to read faster because they are reading this for me. And my deadline for them to finish is middle of November which is NOT going to happen. I realized I’d tried to take this into my own hands and my own deadlines. Which is so ironically silly since I don’t even count this as my book. It only makes sense that God will get the alpha readers reading and done on HIS timeline. So that was another thing I had to let go.
• This might be silly of me but I’ve been stressing about the season. It’s end of October y’all! How insane is that? All around me I hear “Can you believe it’s fall?” “Can you believe summer is over?” Well, maybe it is a bit fast, but can I please be done not believing it and enjoy the season it is NOW? Because soon it will be Christmas time and people will say “Can you believe it’s Christmas time?” And I would have missed fall. I love fall. So I decided to stop being “upset” that summer is gone and embrace the beautiful colors and weather! (besides the bugs. There are WAY too many bugs this year)

What else could be causing stress? If not for me, for you? A project you have going, limits and deadlines no one is pushing you to but yourself? Maybe it’s your social media, blog or peir pressure. What about maybe friends?

Friends CAN be a cause of stress, believe it or not. Fake friends take up our time and nerves, and can make us over all exhausted. I’ve recently stopped entertaining fake friends. I’ve stopped pretending to be everyones best friend. It’s ok if not everyone in the youth group knows my name. They don’t need to.
It’s ok if they don’t say hi to me every single time we’re in the same building, or I don’t demand a hug. It’s perfectly OK. Because what am I losing if I don’t? Nothing worthwhile. Except I will lose my stress!

My point is this. Life is stress. Stress is part of life. The questions is will you let it be your WHOLE life?

I choose to smile. I choose to let go. Yes there are stressful things. But there’s only one thing I can do. Work on the chapter I need to get written today, the lessons I need to complete today. Get my hour of PE in today. Be a good friend to my true friends. And trust God.
Trust God with everything else. I choose to trust Him with my alpha readers, with my deadlines. I choose to trust Him with the growth of this blog, with the revival of my life, with the struggles that I face every single night, and with the fact that I am not perfect.
His mercies are new every morning and He has NEVER failed me before.

I want to encourage you girls to write down everything on a paper. You’re sitting down right now. Get a sheet of paper and a pen and write out what you’re stressing about. Everything. I mean everything. No one else has to ever see this paper.
Once you have it written out, point to them in order and dedicate them to God.

I was honestly shocked when I realized I’d forgotten to leave the alpha readers in God’s hands, even though He had shown Himself so clearly in every other aspect of the book. It still took a conscious decision to say “Ok God, this is your book. Your deadlines. I trust that you are going to get it to the girl(s) who need(s) it.”

Dear God,
Thank you so much for today and for taking care of me. Thank you for the ways that you’ve shown yourself to me in my life and in the lives of those around me.
Today I pray that you would please release this stress that bogs me down. Take it from my shoulders and help my heart to understand that you’ve got it all. This burden is heavy. It pulls me down and some days I just want to kneel and cry. I can’t do this alone. I know you know that and I know I knew that. I know it again.
Jesus cleanse me with the blood that you shed for me and help me to live the life you planned for me. Help me to glorify you with every day and to encourage, uplift, serve, and bless those you have placed in my life. Don’t allow this stifling stress to close my eyes to your ultimate plan.

In Jesus name I pray,
Amen.

~Libby