The No-Stress, Flower Chick

Some possible symptoms of stress...I hope they don't sound oddly familiar.

·         I sprinkle coffee grounds and nuts, drizzle chocolate and peanut butter over a little cup of ice cream in the middle of the day…and eat absolutely nothing else, unless of course it is midnight

·         I want to be left alone, very alone, while I work and plan

·         I mentally begin rejecting counter-plan suggestions before they are voiced

·         I notice how everyone else in the world moves in slow motion, while I buzz like a fly, my gajillion eyes seeing everything at once

·         My heart beats faster and my breathing is shallower

·         The computers all freeze and traffic backs up for miles, with police at every empty, open stretch

·         My mother becomes extremely beyond exceptionally valuable and I NEED her trustworthy backup

·         Everything is a “loose end” and “fit to be tied,” too

·         My checklists due tomorrow are longer than a week is long

·         I feel prickles on my skin and neck just remembering all the deadlines simultaneously

·         I can’t slow down until everything that I can do is done

·         My skin looks haggard and I may actually begin to swell…

·         I cannot minimize any mental windows from operating, but only seem to open more as a day goes by

·         When I finally lay down my mind is still spinning, and my back hurts as it unwinds

·         I want to build a little fort full of munchies and toys and lock all little children inside until further notice

·         I begin to wish I was stupid and unreliable

·         My personal space becomes messier as I prioritize myself down the list

·         Other people’s normal complaints I usually receive as a sounding-board, begin to sound…rather lame

·         I no longer feel  capable of maintaining the office of “emotional buffer” to the general public

·         Other people’s stress endangers others, so I feel a need to pick up theirs, too

·         I look calm and collected, and continue to smile and say “Yes! I’ll take care of that for you!”

·         And then I get sick: like go-to-the-hospital sick

·         Don’t judge. I can’t handle that while I’m stressed, either.

So what can be done without making it another thing to do? What is possible in the middle of the impossible? How can I be everything to everyone and keep it cool and collected? Oh great! If this is me now, what’s it going to be like in a few years when I have forty grandkids bouncing off my dining room table, slinging jelly against the ceiling?

Suppose for a second…Suppose I wasn’t me.  What if I were a chicken? (No, I’m not “losing it once and for all.” Stick with me here.) As a chicken, I might be pecking, clucking absentmindedly, scratching in the dust, and scanning the skies for hawks and the grass for bugs. It sounds rather refreshingly simple. Jesus said, “Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor do they gather into barns…”

Suppose I was a flower. I wouldn’t need to “toil” or “spin.” They just are so fresh, radiant, and lovely. They take no thought for tomorrow and live their short lives, bobbing against the breeze and soaking in the sun and rain, all their needs provided for by Someone. Their modest duties seem to pale against mankind’s responsibilities. Or do they? Scientifically and elementally, maybe they do not.

“…Yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not better than they?” Scripture says of the birds and flowers. He clothes them. He nourishes them. He orders their fleeting existence, too. Rather than struggle in my stress and concealed mental anxiety, I am to, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”  Do I choose to believe that truth and its utterly amazing ramifications? Do I choose to let go and let the cracks fill in with what has slipped through, realizing I have chosen to do what was most important? Can I be a "human being" like nature, instead of a "human doing"?

This is where I take a deep breath: the first in days. This is where I say, “Yo. Hey. It’s all good. God’s in charge!” I bob my head like a sunflower and scan the blue skies like a chicken. Thank you, Lord, for responsibility. Help me to balance it like poultry. Yes, come what may, everything is a’ok.

26  Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

27  Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?

28  And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

29  And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

30  Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

31  Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?

32  (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

33  But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

34  Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof

(Matthew 6:26-34)