The week of the storm I’ve been talking about, I hadn’t been feeling well. I broke my nose, twice, as a young adult, and as I get older, I get headaches signaling temperature and bariatric pressure changes. I knew it was going to be a doozy of a storm because my headaches/face had been telling me for days.
I mentioned to my husband that night about the sharp pains I was experiencing in my head, different from my usual headaches, and he suggested I check my blood pressure. While it wasn’t as high as it has been in the past, it was clearly indicating that the stress we’d been living under for the past few months (different from COVID-19 issues) along with many other Americans, were coming out in physical symptoms.
Knowing my history from the past, I realized this was my invitation to slow down. I started with an extra-long quiet time – no better way to get refocused than with God first.
Then I planned my day … I was going to work on x, y, and z, and if there was time add in a, b, and c. When I sat down to work, our internet was out. I was working on a generator already (our power was still out), but now our internet connection, which had been working fine an hour earlier, was out. I laughed.
I realized God had other plans for what I was supposed to work on instead. (I had told God during my quiet time I was willing to go by His schedule today, not mine if He chose to change it.) So … I wrote down the things I needed to do that required an internet connection to work on next week. Then I wrote down the things I could do today without an internet connection (starting with a phone call to get the repair of our internet in process).
It’s 1 p.m. I had originally told myself I was going to work until 3 p.m. and then go sit outside and enjoy the beautiful weather, reading a book on our newly renovated deck. Since then, I got my husband’s paycheck, so I will be stopping at 2 p.m. to work on bills, then will go sit outside on our deck and read until he gets home.
So while I thought I’d have hours today to work on edits for one of my fiction books, I’ve written the back cover copy for four books, written a few blogs while God’s lessons were fresh in my mind, and I’ll have an hour to focus on edits … knowing I’ll have more time tomorrow to work as well.
I checked my blood pressure, too. The intense headache pain is gone (must have been at least partly weather-related) and while the numbers are still slightly elevated, they are coming down. I’m sure reading outside will be good for both my body (getting Vitamin D) and my soul.
© Cheri Swalwell 2020