Last week in my physiological psychology and neuro-biology class, we learned that stress evokes a fear response in the brain. Everyone in class seemed to think that it was just one of those "duh" moments, but I was shocked. Now, biology isn't my thing so I was already one step behind the rest of the class, but still. Your body treats stress the same way it treats fear; your brain sends out the same response to your body when you are stressed out as when you are terrified. Its no wonder being stressed out takes a toll on you.
It seems like this quarter, and this year, in fact, has been packed with so much stress. Stress of hard classes and hard situations. This week, however, I realized something. The worst has been the looming stress, the stress that never goes away, the stress that comes from the unknown; and what I have figured out is that the stress really is fear of the unknown. If I'm being honest with myself, I'm constantly stressed about things, but the things I'm stressed about are really things that I'm actually scared of. I guess that is a kind of "duh" - no wonder the body takes it as fear, it is fear. Usually, its the little things that get to me, the things that my mom constantly has to remind me to remember that small things don't define me. When I freak out about a test, she'll remind me, "Its just a test." And the thing is, the reason I freak out about the tests and the papers and the assignments are for the grades. Because, if I don't get good grades, I don't have a good GPA, and if I don't have a good GPA, I don't get into a good graduate program, and if I don't get into a good graduate program, I don't get a good job, and if I don't get a good job, then what? What if?
Last week, I dropped a class for the first time in my whole life. It was a class that I was taking because I had to. But, it was too much. I tend to spread myself way too thin sometimes and tackle way too many classes. My parents reminded me that if I'm not having any fun because I'm always working on school and worried about the next test, its just not worth it. So, for the first time, I dropped the class, simply because I didn't want to take it...because I wanted to have fun. And it felt good. When I talked to my teacher about not being able to handle the class at this point in time, she said, "I'm very impressed that you were able to realize that the class is too much for you right now, that is something that most adults don't even know how to do." In that moment, I wasn't worrying about what people thought of me, I wasn't worrying about future plans, but I was living for that day. Each day I'm realizing more and more that life is short. You never know what is going to happen next, so why worry about the future instead of just worrying about the present? I guess I'm a little slow on the uptake because I think this was probably a sunday school lesson waaaay back in the day on Matthew 6:34 accompanied by a nice Steve Green jingle, but seriously. There's no reason to live in fear of the unknown; life is too short and time on earth is fleeting. There's a plan for the future and in His time, the plan will be clear.
