breathe.

First, I’m going back to the top of this to say I just finished this down below and wasn’t expecting it to be this long whatsoever! SO thank you for reading the whole thing if you do and I’m sorry it’s so long!!!!! That wasn’t my original intention!

A lot of people actually don’t know this about me, but I love being busy. I’ve never been sure of the exact reason why, but for some reason, I have always found myself filling my time with anything and everything. I like to keep myself busy and always have something planned. If you know me, you know I love to have everything in my life planned out to the literal second and that’s just how I’ve always been. I like to be organized and I like to know what’s going on. (Quick side note...that’s why I’ve been having a hard time in this current “waiting period” of my life as I am waiting as patiently as I can to find out where I am going to end up in the next year).

Something I have realized about myself in the past few years is that I have the absolute hardest time saying no. I actually despise having to say no to people, plans, or things. I avoid it in every way possible and when I do find myself being forced to say no to something, I become really upset about it.

My mom always tells me I need to slow down and not push myself too hard because we both know that whenever I do, I end up getting sick. I always know that after a period of time of me being crazy busy, plus extremely stressed, I can bet money on it that I’ll end up getting sick by the end of the week. I’ve always known it’s because I’m working myself too hard and God is literally making me take a break because we both know that if I’m not forced to stay in bed, I’ll just keep going & going.

I find myself in amazement when other people I know are able to say no to commitments they have or other things they may have planned because they realize they have too much going on or are feeling stressed. I have so much respect for those people & if you could give me some tips on how you do it...I’d actually honestly love to hear. I’ve never been able to do that and like I already said, I couldn’t tell you why.

Before I write this next part, I’m realizing this is so not me to share something and open up like this. But! I’ve realized lately that being real and honest with people allows you to be so much more intentional with others so here it goes!

Yesterday, I’m not really sure what happened. It was Monday, the beginning of a new week, the day after a relaxing and not stressful weekend, and I didn’t have a lot of homework Sunday or Monday night. I wasn’t feeling stressed or anxious or anything! I got home, made lunch, and quickly rushed to go get a car wash and buy flowers for a friend because it was her birthday. I had to do all of this quickly because I was picking up the little girl I nanny from school at 2:30 and needed to drop off the flowers before that as well. This may sound like a lot, but to me it’s not. This is how I function and how I always have. Trying to fit things into my schedule and planning it down to the exact minute. (I can make my stories real long so I’m going to try my best to summarize this and make it as short and to the point as possible).

Pretty much what ended up happening was my plans were changed as I was sitting in the Trader Joe’s parking lot right after I had bought the flowers. I had to quickly race back home (a 20 minute drive one way) and I didn’t plan for this in my “schedule” so I started to freak out as I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it all. I ended up yelling a lot. At my mom, my sister, and even a friend who called me in the middle of all this happening and I unexpectedly ended up complaining to her about it all. I have never yelled that loud or been that upset in my entire life and I was so confused as to what was happening. I was literally telling myself to calm down and was asking Jesus why I was yelling and so upset. Like I said at the beginning of all of this, I’m not even sure what really happened yesterday.

Fast forward a few hours, I finished nannying, went straight to milk & honey to grab coffee with a friend, and straight from that, I rushed around HB picking up people I had offered a ride to on my way to a church group that night. While I was getting coffee, I became more aware of how anxious and overwhelmed I was feeling, but I didn’t think I had a reason to be so...I blamed it on the caffeine. I’m sure the caffeine was definitely an aspect of it, but there was more to it. As we were pulling up to our friends house for this church group, I was super hyper and all my friends and I were joking around about how much energy I had. I told them I had coffee so it was probably just kicking in a little more than it usually does. My hands started to shake a little, but I knew it was just because of the coffee.

A few minutes later, everyone at my friends house gathered together and my friend started to speak. I found myself spacing out and thinking about 20,000 other thoughts racing through my mind. A few minutes later when he finished sharing, we went into worship and let me tell you, I seriously LOVE worship. It’s the time I feel closest to God, but for some reason, I wasn’t feeling it. I stood there with my hands crossed and I found myself trying to sing the words, but I didn’t even want to. My heart suddenly started to beat and I didn’t feel good. I realized I needed to walk outside and just give myself a chance to breathe and get some fresh air. I debated walking outside by myself, but realized that probably wasn’t a smart idea in case something actually happened. I leaned over to my friend and asked her to walk outside with me real quick. As soon as I closed the door behind me, tears came rushing down my face. I wasn’t expecting to cry and I didn’t know what was even happening. We sat down on a curb and I felt my heart beating so fast, my hands shaking uncontrollable, and my breaths inconsistent. Through my tears and attempts to take deep breaths, I told my friend I literally had no idea what was happening or why I was like this.

((Woah okay I’m so sorry, that had so much detail and was extremely long, so let me sum this up real quick now.))

I’m not even sure how much time passed, but my friend and I ended up sitting outside on that curb the entire time everyone else was inside listening to the message and worshiping. Thankfully, I finally calmed down, but it was with the help of my friend and after a lot of time and talking through some things.

Never in my life have I had anxiety or a panic attack or anything close to anything like that, but I experienced something along that line last night. I know it was everything building up and building up and God literally breaking me down to the point where I could finally catch a breath and take a moment to really realize what was happening in my life around me. So yes, looking back, I am very thankful it all happened because obviously something needed to be made clear to me.

I am still in shock and disbelief that I am actually writing this to share with other people and I’m not really sure why I even am.

Anyways...I never knew how important it is, but I’m learning the necessity of taking time for yourself. I’m really not good at this. I’m a people person and I love to do things so it’s pretty rare that I find myself alone. However, I now know how crazy important this is and it’s something I need to work on. I’m going to start putting a lot more thought into my response before I say yes to everything. People around me have told me it’s okay to say no at times and I’m still working on being able to understand that and actually do it.

This was never something I thought I would be sharing on my blog, but I guess things just happen sometimes. 2 things. One, I’m hoping that I’m not the only one out there that has a hard time saying no to things and constantly fills their life with stuff. Together, I’m challenging us to really try to take a little more time for ourselves and slow down in our every day lives. I would love to keep you accountable and I would love for people to keep me accountable as well.

Second, I already said this, but I am so shocked that I am actually sharing this with other people right now. This is something that I would probably never tell anyone as it’s a little embarrassing, but I had this feeling in my heart that I needed to do it. I’m not sure if anyone else will take anything away from it or if it was just important that I got it out of me, but whatever it was, I know there was some reasoning behind it.

Thank you to anyone that read this and allowed me to share the craziness I’ve experienced in the last 24 hours. I really hope each and every one of you have an amazing week. I truly love you all.

xoxo,

b.