Sweetly Broken

This morning I woke up to beautiful rays of sunshine. What a wonderful change from the last week of drab grey skies and below freezing temperatures and wind. I was the first one up today which was nice, peaceful. I took down all of the blankets that had been hanging from our windows to block the air from entering the house and then opened our blinds for the first time in a while. Oh how nice it was to have natural lighting in the living room again and in my bedroom. Due to our house having such poor insulation we had little to no heat resulting in pulling all of the blankets out and keeping windows closed and covered.

Our little Texan "cold front" came out of no where! I mean seriously I don't know if I have ever been in that cold of weather for that long. Going from 77 to 23 degrees in a matter of a day totally threw me for a loop. Even though I have winter clothes and jackets they are not meant for last weeks temperatures. And the fact that our house was quite the igloo, I could not shake the chill off, FOR THE LIFE OF ME! I could sit at my desk with three blankets wrapped around me and tons of clothes on and still be shaking underneath it all. Unfortunately this lead to a lack of functioning. My focus was off, my mind was wondering all over the place and motivation to go out to class or anywhere for that matter was shot to hell. And then the domino effect continued rippling. My daily structure no longer was there. I couldn't get myself out of bed at 6:00am to get ready for class. If the bus was running late and I wasn't going to make it to a class at my regular time then I didn't go. My homework periods during the day were replaced with non homework tasks. So I then fell behind in my work which I had been working so hard the first few weeks of school to stay on top of so I wouldn't spiral downward. Basically, all screws fell out and I crumbled.

I started doubting myself, any progress that I've made, my leadership position in Phi Lamb and who I was as a person. My perfectionism appeared and continuously told me how off the path I was and how I wasn't getting everything thing done on time and to the best of my ability. I was a complete mess. I was questioning everything that I have worked for to get to this point, my beliefs and goals, desires and what I wanted to work for and why. In a nutshell, a rather large nutshell, the week was emotionally rough.

Yesterday I was able to unload myself to Kirsten, my counselor, what a blessing she is let me tell you! She has not once failed to pull me from the sky and pin me back on the ground firmly. As I spilled everything out like an over flowing volcano she told me about seasonal affective disorder, also known as SAD. It's pretty self explanatory but it is where drastic weather changes cause anxiety, depression, isolation etc. I also like to refer to this as cabin fever on steroids. A lot of people up north experience SAD due to such low temperatures for such a period of time. Kirsten even said that sometimes the heat can cause this as well. I don't want to make excuses for my funky week BUT I fell under this SAD category and was able to take a breath knowing that once again, I AM (somewhat) NORMAL!

**It's now Monday morning. I started this post a few days ago and am just now getting around to finishing it. Had a great Sunday. Spent some much needed time with my prayer group and friends watching the Super Bowl and Jesus last night. This is already a long post. I'll write again later this week...or weekend, it's gonna be a crazy week. But until then stay sweet and smile and remember you are loved.