I think I got a little dose of stress today. First there was a mixup at work with a customer who ended up canceling. I found out there’s a retreat this weekend that I completely forgot about. Someone posted a comment on my blog saying that “are consumed with the inconsistencies of a mere mortal.” It seemed like my short time this morning before school started got consumed by phone calls for work and emails. I originally wanted to use it to prepare for my teaching time for Redwood Kids on Sunday, but pretty much all of it got eaten up by stress.
I’m learning to separate myself from certain emotions and feelings. For example, work. I don’t think there’s any point in me letting mistakes that happen at work get me emotionally down. I can learn from them, find better ways of handling the situation in the future, but why should I let it make me feel like I’m a failure and a screw up? I shouldn’t let it make me feel like I’m bad at my job; earlier I made a program to do work that would normally take three hours to complete in three seconds–that was pretty cool. Seems like I can let one simple mistake cause me to forget the other work I’ve done.
I will never separate my emotions and feelings from God. I will never separate them from Megan. I think I will use discernment when it comes to other people, sometimes people can be emotionally abusive, irrational in their expectations, and so on. I will never separate them from my writing, art, or anything that involves creativity.
I know the major source of stress in my life is relationships, anything that happens which effects a relationship in my life with someone else. If I hurt someone, didn’t get something done on time, didn’t meet their expectations. If I’m running out of time to complete a job for someone else, or if I’m unsure how to do it, that can cause quite a bit of stress. And pain too, feelings of guilt and regret.
I’m trying to teach myself to discern between what’s worth having these feelings of guilt for, and what’s not.
I noticed something about Moses. He failed God when he did not listen to him and struck the rock with his staff instead of speaking to it. If there’s anything we should really feel guilty for, it’s disobeying God. And yet, Moses kept on going; he kept on leading the Israelites to the promise land even though he himself would never see it. That sounds like true unselfish service. Maybe serving God is not always about getting a reward for ourselves–maybe it never was. Maybe we shouldn’t let guilt stop us from doing what we can for God, and other people around us so they can see God.
I’m teaching this story on Sunday at Redwood Kids.
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