New Year's De-Resolution

I have aptly named my blog “A De-stressing Pilgrim” because it describes precisely the vision I believe God is giving me for 2011.  I have never been one to set New Year’s resolutions, since I always felt as if I were setting myself up to fail.  Although I may never set New Year’s resolutions, I set resolutions for myself every minute of every hour, every hour of every day, every day of every week, and every week of every month.  I write unreachable goals on the great life-planner in my mind, and I spend every minute of my life disappointing myself when I don’t reach those goals.  Before another word is read, you must understand something about me.  I have a Type A personality.  I am a list-maker.  I am an organizing freak.  If there were such a thing, I am Type A¹⁰—that is Type A to the 10^th power.  I have lived my nearly 30 years of life living in a goal-oriented hell that has trapped me inside of myself and made me nearly paralyzed in fear of letting myself down.  I have suddenly realized, maybe because of my 30^th birthday approaching, that I do NOT want to live the rest of my life this way.  And so, I have resolved to resolve a lot less in 2011.

For Christmas my sister gave my husband a 3-month membership to Netflix.  Now, this may not seem like that big of a deal, but since we do not have cable, and my husband loves any type of media, this has been a great sacrifice on his part.  So, in essence, this was truly the perfect gift for him.  We have been playing around with it this week since it’s been our stay-cation during the holidays.  And do you know what I am hooked onto?  Documentaries.  So last night, my husband lets me pick out our movie of the night, much to his chagrin.  My pick?  National Geographic’s documentary entitled Stress.  Sorry, Honey.  I know you were hoping for Into the Blue with Jessica Alba in a bikini or Die Hard with Bruce Willis defying physical laws of science as he jumps out of cars and off of buildings.  But you have to admit it—if anyone needed to hear the hard-core truth about stress and it’s effects on the body, it’s me.  Did you know that people who stress a lot age 6 years for every year of their life?  So since I’ve been Type A since birth and remember my first highly-stressful event when I was 4, that means that in the last 26 years I have actually aged 156 years!  Okay, I may be a little off-base—I’m sure I haven’t been highly stressed for every day of those 26 years—but close.  So maybe I’m closer to 100.  But still, with my husband being 33 and the ultimate “whatever, no-stress-in-my-life-EVER” kind of guy, that makes him a WHOLE lot younger than me and that makes me a cougar.  Can you see why I’m a little worried?  I was literally sitting on the couch last night stressing about my stress level.  Yikes.  I really need some help.

So as I was at Starbucks today with my friend (who is also a self-proclaimed Type A), our conversation veered from the topic of churches to stress-level—cue lights: a God thing.  I had no intention of baring my soul to her about my severe short-comings in this area, but there we were, me being highly vulnerable and resulted in her suggesting I see a therapist.  And I must admit, after the documentary last night, I think this might be a very good idea in order to preserve my life while I still have some left.  As we talked, she helped me realize one important fact about myself: because I’m a perfectionist, the goals I set for myself are so high that I continuously disappoint myself by not ever reaching them.  And each time I don’t reach a goal, I lose confidence in who I am as a person and what I am capable of.  This was monumental to me.  I live a life of self-induced stress and it is literally killing me.  I have suffered physical ailments that have at times disabled me from living a fulfilling life.  I live in a constant state of anxiety and many times out-right fear.  My husband asked me this week what exactly was giving me stress.  My response was another question:  “What’s not?”  Finances, my daughter’s health issues, my health, relationships, school, housecleaning, laundry, to-do lists, parenting, worrying about what people think about me, my future, my kids’ futures…do you get the picture?  If I deal with it in any part of my day, I stress about it.  Such an unhealthy way to live—for my mind, my body and my relationships.

As we were watching the documentary, the doctor said that we should only take one day at a time and only worry about today’s worries today.  My husband retorted, “Mmm…sounds a lot like something written thousands of years ago.”  He’s talking about Jesus’ words in Matthew 6:34, “So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself.  Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

This blog is about me spending 2011 finding out how to live this way.  As I get ready to go to bed tonight, I wonder, with a truly sincere heart that is aching from year of stress, what would it feel like to wake up and see only today for today’s blessings?  Today’s goals as today’s opportunities?  Today’s responsibilities as today’s possibilities?  Today’s hours as today’s gift from God?  Today’s events as today’s journey rather than a million little destinations that I must reach?  I don’t know.  But, with God’s help, I really want to find out.  Join me.