Anxious for Nothing

That fun little command Paul gives in the fourth chapter of that awesome little book of Philippians is resonating in my mind right now. As I'm writing this, I can feel my blood pressure soaring and the anxiety welling within me more and more with each minute I come closer to a rather large event. In exactly 8 hours and 53 minutes we will be launching our youth conference (see earlier posts) for this holiday. I expect around 70 or so students to be on this campus over the next three days from 9am - 7pm. The schedules are made, the playlists are set, the booklets are printed, the games are planned, the leaders have been recruited, my cooks are lined up, the supplies are bought, and the word has gone out. It's now just down to the wire of a few final things that I have to get done and I almost feel paralyzed by how daunting it all still seems.

This will be the fourth conference I've organized, not to mention other events, and so you would think that I would get used to the stress and I guess what it comes down to is the pressure, but I don't. Each time I have a big event like this I morph into a different person who is consumed by every minute detail and is honestly not a very nice person to be around because everyone just can't seem to "understand" what it takes to put on an event of this magnitude. I leave quite a wake during the preparation of these events of people I've kind of laid into and snapped at and I hate that.

This conference, things have kind of been taken up a notch because I'm flying solo for the whole organizing of it. I normally have a "number two" or at least I'm someone else's number two, but not this time. I never realized how nice it was having someone there who 1) understood the stress 2) knew when to help and when to stay out of the way and 3) didn't have to be managed and just did what needed to get done no questions asked (honestly, I hate it when people ask me questions when i'm in this frame of mind).

By now, I'm sure you're wondering what on earth I'm doing writing a blog at a time like this. And I guess I would have to give the answer that considering I was on the brink of seriously freaking out, I needed to kind of take a deep breath, process things, and remember why I'm doing this, and who is ultimately in control of the outcome of this conference. I really am so excited about it, but the perfectionist in me is keeping me from really enjoying the potential. I guess as hard as it may be, I need to just continuously lay it at His feet, trust in His plan and His strength, and "Be anxious for nothing".