I tend to get sick twice a year.

Once when it starts getting cold, and again when the weather starts warming up.

Yesterday I awoke with the scratchy, pinching throat and my sinuses felt loose and sloshy. On top of that, for it being a sleep-in Saturday, I was uncommonly tired considering how well and how long I slept.

My health was on the decline. I took medicine, vitamin C, and caffeine and hoped, out of all of those, that something would make me feel better.

I was wrong. My body became tired from being so sick I crashed on the couch come 9pm.

This morning I awoke with my head throbbing, my body weak, my stomach gurgling.

While I committed myself to putting on hair and makeup (as I always feel better after that), I decided I would sport the day in my PJs: an oversized shirt and oversized yoga pants.

That is, until Mr Hunter called. Mr Hunter was about 45 minutes away and was supposed to be home this morning but plans had changed.

"Could you bring me my laptop, charger, and a set of extra clothes?" he asked.

So I changed my pants, put on some shoes, put the kiddos in the car and we road-tripped for almost two hours.

But first, my daughter snapped a couple photos.

And thankfully, I felt pretty good...until coming home where I took a solid, two hour nap.

I am going to make a confession.

I am hating the job that I have.

I could on from the time I got this job in April to now but to save you the pages I would be writing, trust me when I say you would hate it too.

While I have several friends who just listen and laugh at the crud that I find is completely unnecessary for me to have to deal with, I have other friends who have told me, point blank, to quit.

And while quitting sounds spectacular, I wasn't born a quitter. My parents didn't raise me to get a job that once the stress levels meet as such that I'm considering jumping off a Dallas skyscraper, to just quit.

I understand now the sense of how it feels to be kicked when you're down, and once you think you've gained bearings finally someone throws a wrench in it.
I have learned that working with friends will have you seeing some color of theirs that you didn't think they could have. And having to look past it.
I have found that you'll never, ever, ever reach everyone's level of perfection...and that there'll always be that ONE person that expects you to rope them the moon while patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time.

And now we're at today. Today was just one of those days. One of those days where I didn't wanna get up and attend my early morning meetings and then my regular meetings. As the day progressed, more trivial things happened that alone, are nothing, but when you pack them together, on top of everything else that is going on right now in my job, with the new year and the big changes that'll make, I just wished that someone else could deal with all this and then I could resume in a few weeks.

Maybe I'm an avoider. That must be it. That I wanna run away from crud that is ruining the flow that I'm trying to keep.

And yet, in my journal, I found myself writing this:

And yet, throughout all this, I feel like I am to stick it out and not quit. And I'm looking up at the skies like, "Are you for real? What am I to learn from all this?" And then I hear God tell me I'll know soon enough, but for now I feel like a puppet on strings! And I'm mad because I also hear God saying that I don't have it that bad and to just trudge through it because when I complain to him I feel like he's understanding but is telling me to cowboy up and that it'll be fine soon enough.

(source)

Like, I'm seriously hearing him tell me the same thing I tell my kids when they come to me with silly issues like not wanting to make their bed because they can't do it right. I'll just say, "But you can do it, so do it! The more you do it the better you'll become so get started" and then I'll shoo them into their room before they could complain any more.

God is aware of me, He hasn't left my side. So why am I acting like He has? And why am I acting like he's given me a job that I can't handle?

I have realized that through the hard times comes the greatest lessons. Just right now, in the thick of it, I can't see them. But as the great saying goes: Life is understood backwards, but must be lived forwards.

But I will see soon enough these lessons I am to learn. In the mean time, I will "cowboy up".