I believe there are two types of bad stress. One kind is the kind we mostly associate that word with, and I call it Explicit Stress. Stress that leaves nothing implied, as explicit is defined. Traffic, deadlines, event planning, a flat tire, your baby crying, etc. Then there's the other kind, the dangerous kind, Implicit Stress. The kind of stress not easily defined or relieved. Miscommunication in a friendship, feelings of instability in a job, extreme discontent with self, a sick or rebellious loved one, depression and/or anxiety, a nomadic lifestyle, etc.

I've experienced this type of stress quite a bit in my life. It wasn't till a few years ago that I started to realize just how much implicit stress can eat away at you from the inside out! Everyone deals with stress differently, and everyone's symptoms of stress are different. In the book "The Gift of Pain", Paul Brand talks about how our bodies send us signals, and I found this fascinating. When our bodies feel heat or pain, our natural reaction, the signal sent to our brain, is telling us to get away from that through some kind of automatic reaction. When we sit in a certain position in our chair and it starts to hurt our backs, our bodies are signaling our brains to tell the rest of our body to change our position. When we stress and our bodies really FEEL that stress, like through back knots, headaches, etc., it is telling us to pay attention.

I am finally starting to pay attention. I'm paying attention to what the heck my body is trying to tell me when things happen. Often times I will go, go, go until my body says stop, stop, stop. Isn't it amazing how God designed our bodies?! We stress out, right? When I'm stressed and in the go-mode, I don't listen to people telling me to stop, I don't listen to bible verses telling me to calm down, but I will darn well listen to my body when it starts breaking out in random pain. As weird as it sounds, I am actually thankful for this pain. I'm thankful for those sensors in my body, because without them, who knows what kind of basketcases we'd be!

When I moved away to college, I experienced Round 1 of The Body Freak-Out. I had severe and unexplainable pain all over my body and I was in and out of the college doctor's office--trust me, this was not something I did for attention, this was very real pain. I finally realized that this was probably happening because I hated most of my first year of college. I was lonely, I had no friends there, I didn't care about school, I didn't party or drink, and I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life.

Once in a while I feel that stress again, usually it happens when a big change is about to happen, or happening, in my life. When I move, when I get a new job, or other big changes. I'm about to incur a huge change in my life- I would say probably the biggest change I will ever go through. Moving to Florida was stressful, yeah, but I had lots of friends and I was in the U.S. in my comfort zone. I'm about to go to another country, with new friends, to a new job and a new home. Not only that, but I can't go until I get enough financial support. For those of you that think support raising is easy, I would love to get advice from you! In my opinion, it's very stressful. I have my up's and down's, but overall, it's hard to imagine that it could be months until I receive my support. The big question mark over the next few months can be a little unnerving.

Even though I do really trust God that He'll take care of me- I guess there's no excuse for the stress, but nevertheless, I am human and I stress.

Anyway, as to how it affects me. Like what happened in college, I have unexplainable pain for one. Over the past few weeks I've had some substantial pain in my shoulder/arm for no reason, my wrist hurts so bad I can't even brush my hair, and my foot hurts so much I went to the doctor. (It takes a lot for me to visit a doctor!) By the way, the foot pain is because of a bone spur in my big toe joint and severe pronation- keep it up and I'll need surgery, yay! Not! Umm I'll get headaches, backaches, and a LOT of other weird things I'd rather not post on this blog--for your own sake! And it sucks too, cause to explain that to someone is soooo lame. Like, I'll flinch when I turn a doorknob or something and someone's like, "Are you okay??" and I'm like, "Yeah um... it's just stress." That's stupid--I want to be like, "Ohh yeah, I was pulling someone up from a cliff who was about to fall to their death. Yep, saved their life, thanks to my trusty wrist."

Ya know I think this whole entry could have just said, "Stress makes me hurt" and you would have gotten the picture. Oh well. Hey, how does stress affect you? What are you going through that is stressful?