Stress -- good stress, bad stress. Doctors say your body doesn’t know the difference. Some people feel stressed. Others don’t seem to have it. But it’s usually there on some level -- even if it’s at that subconscious level that only comes out either in a counseling session or when you can’t get your can-opener to work.
I’ll admit it: I’m preparing myself for a season of stress. Now mind you, it’s not all bad, head-achy stress. But my life is getting ready to undergo some major changes that will no doubt make things. . . interesting around here. We’re packing up to move in about three months. It’s a work-related move. We’re all excited, God has definitely led us there -- so that’s all good. But if I think too much at one time about selling the house (of course, before I sell the house, I need to repair it, including an exhaust fan in our bathroom that’s been broken since shortly after we moved in), packing up our entire existence into pasteboard boxes, finding a new place to live, changing all of our magazine and billing addresses on websites I’ve forgotten how to find, and locating the three essential W’s that you must establish in any new town -- Work, Worship, and Wal-Mart -- it makes my eye twitch a little, like that bad guy in the Pink Panther movies.
You all know what I’m talking about.
I guess it’s not that we have stress, but rather, what we do with it. I mean, Jesus even said to his disciples “In this world you will have troubles.” Granted, he was probably speaking of something a little nobler, more like persecution for one’s faith, than say, me having to lay some new linoleum in my home office. Either way, stress is a given, right? So what do we do with it?
Example #1: All four of the Dyers are home sick with various illnesses that all involve some form of phlegm. After being cooped up all day, the two Dyer children decide to begin an almost tribal exhibition that involves running around the house with little clothing on and screaming incomprehensible gibberish (perhaps their own boyish version of Whitman’s barbaric yawp, sounded over the roofs of the . . .kitchen).
During the course of this unbridled display, one of the kids gets hurt somehow -- so the next refrain involves a chorus of crying. As mommy Dyer tries to wrangle the living jell-o that is our children, daddy Dyer heads for the powdered donuts. With each increasing decibel, with each cacophonic refrain, another white donut. One donut, two donuts, three -- how many were in the bag when I started? Methinks it was a pitiful sight, which only came to a rest when no one could see any longer through the white-powdered haze that lay over our kitchen like a British fog.
(For those trying to keep up, example #1 is not the way to handle stress. I’ll continue soon with a post that contains another example of how to handle stress. Until then, put down the donuts!:-)
