Stressed Out!

I think we've all had those times when life is just crazy. You are doing all you can just to make it through the day, and you feel just plain stressed out. Well I've had one of those weeks. The kids are out of school, and have TONS of homework to complete before they go back. Especially English homework (my area of expertise - namely because I speak it). From 7am until 10pm every day, homework, homework, homework. And it seemed that everything that could go wrong did, of course. Everyone was stressed because of all the pressure, kids are acting out, no one wants to do their homework, several are having to do manual labor for acting up in school, many have not been doing the classwork they should have been doing all along and so now their work is quadrupled, internet always goes out just when you need it, the computers are being crazy, etc. etc. Somehow, the 6th graders did not recieve English books this year, there weren't enough or something like that. So, they should have been filling out pages in this book since January. So now they have 4 units to complete in one week (plus 4 translations and memorize vocab, etc). The problem was that they had no books to fill out. So we had to borrow one and make copies. But since everyone was gone, the only one available to borrow was the teacher's edition. So I had to go through and put little pieces of paper over all the answers in order to make copies for the kids. (I"m still in the process actually). The long and short is that I have been very stressed, very frustrated, and very upset this week. And I let everybody know it.

Now the question is, did all my stressing and worrying and complaing help anything? No, of course not, it just made things worse. The kids were already stressed themselves, me snapping at them did not help matters one bit. It's amazing the difference attitude can make. It's true that all the things that happened might have been unfair, unjust, inconvienient. But I still have a choice how to respond. I want the kind of peace that is calm in the storm, the kind of love that helps me respond softly to kids even when they're being obnoxious, the kind of confidence that can let me whither any trial, knowing that it's all worth it in the end.

This can only be found in one place - at the feet of Jesus Christ. Every day, before I start the day and many times throughout the day, I need to surrender my human feelings and thoughts to the control of my loving Savior. Every day I need to let Him work through me and in me, so that I can be a witness to those around me. I can't do anything good without Him. I need Him more every day, I need Him every second of every minute of every hour. I pray that this week, you and I both will step back and let God do His best work in us. Let Him transform us into His image, day by day. And stop stressing :)