Manic Monday Meets TMI Tuesday

So I’ve decided to try blogging every day again, but with more of a focus. Yesterday was supposed to be my first “Manic Monday” post.  Unfortunately, one of my students was hospitalized and I went to see him after school. By the time I finally got home last night, it was too late to even think about posting, so “Manic Monday” blurred into “TMI Tuesday.”

But I still want to reflect a bit how on THIS Monday was so very different from most of my other Mondays. Fast forward past the actual day and go straight to what happened later last night. Even though it was a school night, I went to Monday Worship on the other side of the island. So much had happened on Sunday that I couldn’t wait to go there and be a part of what was going on. One heart. One voice. Each time I’ve gone it’s been amazing and I needed to add my voice and my heart.

Unfortunately, I started having persistent chest pains that wouldn’t go away. I started to get scared and then I started to tense up.  If there was an Olympic medal for jumping to conclusions, I’d win it hands down. I started thinking that if I was going to have a heart attack — what better place to drop dead than in a room full of worshiping Christians??

SO… there I was mid-angst when I feel this guy’s arm go around me and his hand rested on my shoulder. That this didn’t weird me out was a minor act of God. I knew who it was though we’ve never really talked. He’s another one of God’s beautiful young men sent to minister to me. He immediately started talking to me… whispering sweet somethings in my ear. I can’t remember exactly what he said… but it made me want to smile and cry all at once. He told me that I am so full of joy and that when I come into a room I make people happy. Nobody has ever accused Bipolar Girl of being full of joy. And after teaching for nearly 20 years, I’ve been accused of being full of a lot of things… but joy has never been one of them. He went on to comment about what I said in church on Sunday and my heart swelled. His words cut right through my anxiety and literally made my rapidly beating heart be still. The squeezing chest pains subsided as I tried to figure out if I needed to smile or cry or both. And then, the moment was over. He stepped away and we both started singing again.

At the end of the evening, he got all prophetic on me praying about something that only God knew about. I also had a chance to speak to The Older Gentleman and his Lovely Wife. To say that I floated home on a cloud would be an understatement.

I drifted off to sleep with worship music in my head. Unfortunately, a few hours later that I was forcibly ejected from bed by the most excruciating pain I’ve ever experienced (and this coming from a woman who had surgery to remove a 10 lb uterine fibroid). It was crazy. I felt crazy. I was trying to stand without falling. It felt like the veins in the front of my legs were clogged and ready to burst. It wasn’t bone. It wasn’t muscular. It felt like there were big knots forming in my veins trying to rip their way out. I debated about waking my housemate to take me to the ER, but I promised myself the last time I went to the ER that that would be the last time I went to the ER unless I was dying. Since I wasn’t dying I decided to pray. I tried to walk it off. I tried massaging the site of the pain. I prayed some more. I kept praying until I was too tired to stand and fell back into bed in an exhausted sleep.

I woke up feeling emotionally fragile. What had happened to me? Between the chest pains, my chronic low pulse, and the pain in my legs I immediately visited the worst case scenario and camped there: surely, I had blood clots in my legs that would result in my immediate and untimely death. I can joke now… but  this is what too much WebMD does to me. It takes a legitimate fear I’m already feeling and amps it up so that I’m paralyzed by terror. Today could have gone very wrong. I could have morphed into my altered ego.  I knew that part of last night was spiritual attack. I also knew that I wasn’t going to the hospital or going to call my doctor. I’m tired off all the tests and the poking and prodding.

So WHAT happened?? I prayed and left it with God. Today I went to work and did a damned good job. I didn’t morph into Bipolar Girl although everything about Monday seemed designed to screw with my mental health. While I’ve been having some majorly mountain top experiences, it seems like those moments are short lived before I get hit by a wave of trial. Monday itself may have been “manic,” but I wasn’t. All the ingredients were there in the wee hours when the pains in my legs woke me to make Tuesday a bad day too… but it wasn’t. I went to work and did my job with joy so that peace just seemed to follow me all day. My legs still hurt and my chest is sore. I’m exhausted, but today was a great day.

Today (February 14th) is rapidly turning into “tonight” and I’m beat. I’m hoping that I don’t have a repeat of last night because I don’t relish having the crap scared out of me again. Today was also Valentine’s Day and it was made that much more special to me because God has so completely changed my heart. Not only can I see that I have a greater capacity for love… but beautiful young men are telling me ridiculously cool things like I am full of joy and that I bring the happiness into a room. (Be still my beating heart. Literally.) With that memory treasured up in my heart, how could today have been anything less than perfect?