God Trumps the Post Office Anyway, Right?

Today is Wednesday, the proverbial "hump day" of the week. There is really not much to report from my side of the fence, except the same-old, same-old, but I felt like writing about it anyway.

My anxieties today are at an all-time high. This stems from a huge debt I cannot yet pay but desperately want to...in a hurry, since it's technically due today. The consequences of that, as of this moment, are still up in the air. The good thing about things that are "up in the air" is that they are closer to God, I suppose, in the symbolic sense anyway! However, because of this issue, I am on edge, but that's nothing new. I have always struggled with anxiety and catastrophic thinking, even though I know how sinful that can be. It is not intentional, but I cannot blame it on any sort of diagnosed chemical imbalance either. All I know is that I can start the day with a hangnail, and by lunchtime, I'm convinced that my entire arm is going to fall off, which will result in me not being able to type, which will result in me having to give up my business, which will result in me losing my house and starving me and Cissy to death. Funny how a little hangnail can cause all that, huh? Or maybe it isn't really funny at all, because this is really how my mind works, especially on a day when I realistically cannot take care of something I need to take care of. When these catastrophic thoughts take over, no matter how absurd, I do the following: 1) Pray; 2) Vent; 3) Pray again, because that venting has likely resulted in someone telling me to pray; 4) Recite the scriptures that remind me that I should not be anxious about anything; 5) Feel guilty for feeling anxious; 6) Pray for forgiveness for feeling anxious; 7) Vent again; 8) Pray again for forgiveness for feeling anxious and venting and praying so much without trusting; 9) Repeat Steps 1-9. It's really a vicious cycle, but it happens even over the smallest of things, because in my head, they are not small. Case in point: getting the mail.

Our post office burned down in early November of 2014, nine months ago. As such, since our tiny burg of a village has no home delivery of mail, our mail is now re-routed to North Hampton, a nearby, slightly more civilized burg (they have a Family Dollar and a restaurant, after all!). We have been told that this will continue until October or November of this year (yay for Federal red tape!), but I cannot drive there every day. It is not all that far, but it's far enough that I don't want to burden my gas budget or my old car with daily trips back and forth, not to mention that it takes about forty minutes out of my day and is a major pain. So, I go about twice a week. I don't really get that much mail anyway, but the problem that results from this is...

After about two or three days of not getting the mail, the thought occurs to me to wonder what life-shattering thing might be sitting in my post office box: A shutoff or bill I can't pay on time? Am I being audited? A nasty letter from someone in my past? A package of anthrax? A bomb? A summons, a threat, a ransom letter, an eviction notice? None of these things are logical, nor is there really any rational reason to worry about them (well, except for the bills and shutoffs and possibly the audits, since we never really know about the IRS, even if you're not committing evasion or fraud), yet this is where my brain goes. The relative inability to get my mail daily and ease these tensions only allows them to grow into monstrous, illogical, catastrophic thoughts in my head, and by the time I do get up to North Hampton and park outside that tiny little strip where the post office and barbershop are, I have a knot in my stomach. I literally have to pray on the commute between Tremont and North Hampton that God will give me the physical strength to walk into the post office to get the mail. "God, please help there not to be anything horrible in there...or if there is, please help me to deal with it without having a heart attack," I whisper as we drive past Fent's, too distracted to even yearn for a chicken jelly sandwich. I feel like I'm going to throw up as I walk in the door of the tiny post office. And what happens in there after I take a free cream soda Dum-Dum sucker from the little bowl and wait for the nice mail clerk to fetch our mail? About 99.9% of the time, all I get is a regular bill I'm expecting, a bunch of junk, magazines I don't want, cigarette coupons for the almost-ex that I promptly throw in the recycle bin (I have asked them to stop sending them, but if Newport and Marlboro, those homicidal cancer-causers, wish to waste their postage and printing costs sending them to a nonsmoker, so be it), and catalogs of things I cannot afford and do not need. This is how my absurd anxiety works. It turns something as common and everyday as getting the mail into a Chicken Little scenario, and no matter how many times the horrible things I imagined DON'T show up in my mail pile, and no matter how many times God gives me the strength to walk in there and face the dreaded mail, the next time I get it, I get that same knot in my stomach, and my head swims with those thoughts again. No matter how hard I try to remind myself, It was fine the last time. You're being unreasonable and insane, Autie. It's JUST the mail. Calm down. Worry not. Be not anxious in any thing! God trumps the post office! I remain painfully, numbingly anxious. If someone asked me the one thing I loathe most about myself, this is it.

I know many reading this will say I need to work on my faith and my trust. You're absolutely right. I know many will say I need to stop letting these irrational worries and thoughts overtake me. You're right too. I know many will remind me that God has not given us a spirit of fear, that worry is a sin and an insult to God and a lack of faith, that the Bible specifically tells us not to be anxious. You're all 100 percent correct. I KNOW all these things, and I appreciate being reminded of them, but my problem is putting them into practical action. I am REALLY struggling with doing that and have struggled with it my whole life. This is and always has been a pattern for me, since the time I was very small, as if something fractured in my head and/or heart long ago, and I cannot seem to mend it. I pray for strength. I pray that God will stand in the way of these crazy thoughts. I pray that my faith will be stronger than the anxieties that I and/or the devil allow to crowd into my head. I pray all this daily, several times a day, yet I still cannot seem to get a grip. On days like today, when I cannot yet pay my rent and am waiting to hear what my truly wonderful, patient, understanding, and kind landlord has to say about that (a major regret for me is being a disappointment to people like him), I feel defeated and conquered by thoughts I cannot seem to control, even though I know God is stronger than the most catastrophic and irrational of these thoughts. God IS bigger than the bogeyman, even the scariest bogeyman I can drum up in my head (which is pretty darn scary)! I know this, but for some reason, knowing isn't helping me to conquer that fear.

So I suppose this is my confession, but it is also a request for prayer. Please pray that I will find strength to be strong. Please pray that after forty-some years of worrying and fretting myself into a oatmeal-headed and paralyzing stupor, I will somehow find a way to set all that worrying aside so that normal things like getting the mail don't terrify me and I am not overcome with insomnia or nausea over what should be simple things like asking the landlord for an extension or picking up the mail on a Wednesday. I believe wholeheartedly that God can conquer anything, and anxiety is no different. I am doing what I can (like employing some advice friends have given me, praying a LOT, reading my Bible a lot, even going through a self-help devotional for stress, using natural supplements and homeopathics for clarity and calmness, getting plenty of rest and trying to eat properly, and focusing on blessings and happy things by purposely acknowledging gratitude for them), but prayer is ALWAYS welcome as I try to conquer this lifelong enemy of mine.

All of that said, with this somewhat embarrassing and transparent confession complete, I will say that there are things to be so grateful for in life. I had the chance last night to enjoy a little time with my fam in celebration of my nephew's sixteenth birthday. I can't believe he's grown up so fast, and I'm VERY proud of the young man he is becoming. Besides, who doesn't love chocolate cake!?!? My Cissy's gradecard came today, and she got straight A's all year. I am SO proud of her, because with the K12/OHVA curriculum she studies, she does it ALL on her own, and it is not easy for kids to be so focused and self-motivated; in all my worries, my girl's grades are something I never have to worry about, and I'm one proud and grateful mama about that! The scales were nicer to me this morning than I expected, and after a loss of 1.3 pounds this past week, I'm finally down to the fib I told when I renewed my driver's license last time, and I only have 15.3 pounds to go to hit my long-standing goal weight. We have food in our fridge, doggies to cuddle, my car did not blow up today, I still have a roof over my head and am hoping that will remain the case this week, and we're looking forward to a fun Fourth with some family friends. I'm still ecstatic about the way one of my clients has blessed me with a massive surprise this week, my friend Wes's daughter's stolen bike was replaced by a generous shop in their town, and I have lots of work to do, which I am thankful to have, even if it can be overwhelming.

Life is not all worries, and even the worries I do have are really unfounded, and that, in and of itself, is a blessing all its own! Now that I've written this here, maybe I can read this paragraph again and again to remind myself of it, especially on the days when I have to get the mail and pay the rent!