Over the past month or two, it has gotten to the point that I have had to battle mental and physical exhaustion everyday. My plate is full but in light of everything I have going on, God knows exactly what I need and when I need it. In the mornings I have been reading out of Jesus Calling. Even accompanied with scripture, it’s so interesting to me how every morning God knows what I need to battle this exhaustion. Over the past week or two, it has been spot on what I needed to hear. 

February 7

Come to me for rest and refreshment. The journey has been too much for you, and your are bone-weary. Do not be ashamed of your exhaustion. Instead, see it as an opportunity for Me to take charge of your life. Remember that I can fit everything into a pattern for good, including the things you wish were different. Start with where you are at this point in time and space, accepting that this is where I intend you to be. You will get through today one step, one moment at a time. Your main responsibility is to remain attentive to Me, letting me guide you through the many choices along your pathway. This sounds like an easy assignment, but it is not. Your desire to live in My presence goes against the grain of “the world, the flesh, and the devil.” Much of your weariness result from your constant battle against these opponents. However, you are on the path of My choosing, so do not give up! Hope in Me, for you will again prasie Me for the help of My Presence. — Romans 8:28, Psalm 42:11

February 11

My peace is like a shaft of golden Light shining on you continuously. During days of bright sunshine, it may blend in with you surroundings. On darker days, My Peace stands out in sharp contrast to your circumstances. See times of darkness as opportunities for My Life to shine in transcendent splendor. I am training you to practice Peace that overpowers darkness. Collaborate with Me in the training. Do not grow weary and lost heart. — John 1:4-5, Hebrews 12:3

February 14

Give yourself fully to the adventure of today. Walk boldly along the path of Life, relying on your ever-present Companion. You have every reason to be confident, because My Presence accompanies you all the days of your life-and onward into eternity of abundant living. Trust Me enough to face problems as they come, rather tahn trying to anticipate them. Fix your eyes on Me, the Author and Perfecter of your faith, and many difficulties on the road ahead will vanish before you reach them. Whenever you start to feel afraid, remember that i am holding you by your right hand. Nothing can separate you from my Presence! — Hebrews 12:2, Isaiah 41-13

What a semester! What a year! I’ve been meaning to write this blog post for the past 2 weeks and am actually getting around to it now. So much has happened this year and looking back on it, it is so important to focus on all of the blessings despite the difficult times. 

This year marked Zoe Blake’s 1st full year as a Carlson and y’all she is crazy and adorable all at the same time! This morning at our church’s fellowship, she knocked over 2 drinks and broke a pot of silverware which made her big sister beyond frustrated. She’s a hand full, but she has taught my family and I so much. It is a blessing to watch KJ be such a good big sister to her. Zoe sat through KJ’s Christmas program this morning at church and KJ’s face lit up when Zoe sat on my lap and pointed at her and said, “KK!” 

I graduated from The University of Tennessee this year and what a blessing it is. I also got into grad school which was huge and I just finished my 1st semester of it. While it was one of the most trying semesters I have had like ever, it taught me a lot about life and who I am and who I am going to be. My stress level was really unhealthy this semester due to all of the demands and constraints of school, work, internship, and life in general. I spent all semester terrified that my GPA was going to barely make the cut, and come to find out it was well over the line and what a sigh of relief I breathed when I found out. TIme management is not my forte, but somehow I managed and made it through! I was blessed to get on board with Children’s Hospital for my internship which was the main reason that I went to grad school. I love my internship and I have such a fun supervisor and am learning so much. Most people know that I have hearing loss and while it’s probably more frustrating for those around me than myself, it is a blessing as well. My hearing loss is just barely bad enough to be consider a disability, so the state pays for my tuition. While they are a pain to work with, that is a huge burden that my parent’s and I do not have to worry about. I have about 3 weeks until school starts again, and I am going to enjoy every minute that I do not have to focus on another paper or assignment that is due. I’m at Starbucks right now writing this out of pure habit that I spend every Sunday afternoon here frantically trying to finish my next paper. I was blessed to receive proficiency out of a course this semester and hopefully I will be blessed again and get proficiency out of another course this next semester.

I have an awesome job at the UT bookstore that I was blessed with a year and half ago. It’s a job I really enjoy and all the drama I get put into the middle of is complete chaos and definitely makes for some great stories. I have really cool bosses and work with some pretty fun people. Being so stressed out with school, it’s a great, flexible job that makes so many other things that much easier.

I have some incredible friends that have blessed me a great deal over this past year as well through prayer and just quality time. I met and spent time with some incredible friends over the summer through my summer job at Kanakuk and as always it is one of the best parts of my year. God new that finding out about my mom’s caner was going to be difficult, so having me be at kamp when I recieved the news was his way of blessing me and giving me strength because I was surrounded by nothing but encouragement and prayer and people that cared a great deal about me. I got to spend a great weekend with my dear friend Zach Moore who I would rather just call my brother. He was on his way down to Ft. Benning, GA and I only get to see him about once a year, but the weekend he came was perfect timing in amongst all of the things that were going on. I needed it and his encouragement to myself and family gave me a lot of strength to finish out the semester. I never would have been able to make it through this semester without my best friend, Amy Milam as well. While we get to spend little time together during the semesters, we talk constantly and her encouragement gives me strength and good gravy we made it through our first semesters of grad school to Christmas break!! Having mentioned these 2 very special people, I get to spend this next week with both of them! Once again, the Lord’s blessings are never ending.

My family has been greatly blessed by Cancer Treatment Center of America in Goodyear, Arizona over the past semester while my mom has been battling breast cancer. They are such a strong encouragement and provide state of the arc care which puts so many of mom’s worries to rest. Along with this, my family has blessed by church family and school family from where my little sister attends and I graduated from. My mom works at East Maryville Baptist Church and my dad is the pastor at Wildwood Baptist Church so it’s almost as if we have 2 church families. So many people have done so much and it is impossible to mention everything here, but we would not be getting through this time so well without all of these people who care about my family so much. My mom is recovering from a double mastectomy right now and when she had the surgery the pastor she works with surprised my parents and flew out to Arizona to spend the day with my dad while my mom had surgery. What a blessing and encouragement this was for my parents. My mom has a great doctor who cares about his patients a great deal and loves my parents that much more because he is Chinese and he has great respect for my parents heart for adoption. Cancer is a terrible and difficult thing and you can choose to focus on the sickness and all the horrible things that can be caused by it or you can choose to focus on the positive and good things in every day and every thing that are a result of the battle. The Lord equips us as we go so why do we doubt and worry so much?

Last but not least, how does God show up in ham you might ask? Wellllll, I’ll have you know that the Carlson family likes Honey Baked Ham. Honey Baked Hams are expensive. Every year, we say we are going to get one for Christmas and never do. This year my parents really wanted to but just weren’t sure ‘cuz it’s flavor costs a pretty penny. My mom got a call last week from the pastor she works with and he asked, “Hey, do y’all like Honey Baked Ham?” My mom said of course and he said that there was a family in the church who had an extra one and asked him if he knew of a family that could use it so they wouldn’t have to cook so much on Christmas day. God decided to add another cherry to the blessing sundae and give us a free honey baked ham for Christmas. It’s chillin’ the freezer now. Seriously? That’s cool y’all!

So many small things can become so much more when you focus on life’s blessing despite the daunting and overwhelming fears of life’s troubles. God never said life would be easy, but faith in Him sure makes it a whole lot easier. Focus on others throughout these last 2 weeks of 2011 and thank the Lord for the many blessings over this past year.

Everyone knows that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and I wanted to take a few minutes to explain it means much more to me and my family than it did last year. Most people know that my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer at the end of July. I left kamp a week early to come home and take care of my little sisters so that my parents could go to a Cancer Treatment Center of America in Goodyear, Arizona. Without going into much detail, I’ll say it was beyond the best decision that my mom decided to get treatment from this hospital. A little background to catch people up, my mom was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer at the beginning of her diagnosis. This was ruled out when she got to Arizona. Her cancer is all estrogen related as is for many women. The doctor told her multiple times that, obviously no one wants cancer, but if you have to have it, this kind is the kind you want. She was given a chemo treatment plan and has followed it for the past couple of months until the doctor switched her to pills and shots because the chemo was not working about a month ago. This is not all bad. Chemo is designed to attack aggressive cancer. The fact that the chemo was not working says her cancer is not aggressive. However, during this last visit to Arizona which was a couple of days ago, the doctor said he was not happy with what the pills and shots are doing. This week, the doctor and his team will decide if they want to go ahead and perform surgery on my mom. This is definitely ahead of schedule, but somewhat of a relief to my mom to go ahead and have the surgery. A small setback is that her lymphnodes have grown some. Treatment to deal with this will be decided upon within the next couple of weeks. There is a very good chance that my mom will be going out for surgery within the next 2 weeks. 

So many people have been a blessing to my mom, my family, and myself. I ask for continued prayers for my mom and my family as we continue this journey. Pray for the doctors who are making the executive decision on how to treat my mom. God has provided an incredible treatment facility, an incredible church family, and words of encouragement from many. The amount of women that breast cancer affects each year is astronomical and my mom has found hope and encouragement through meeting some of these women while in Arizona and even at home. So when you see a pink ribbon, lift up a prayer for those you know that are being affected by breast cancer and they’re families. I wear pink for my mom.

I have really neglected my blog. I haven’t even finished the Shutterfly book from this summer yet! I need to find the time to work on my time management skills.

When I got accepted to grad school, I thought, “Hey, at least I’m just going straight through to grad school and won’t have to get used to being in school again if I were taking a break from it.” My perspective at the time was very naive. I am so glad that I am in grad school and am thankful for the experience, but the title says it all. The letters MSSW will be worth all this hard work and more. I have a planner and a great memory for mental list taking, but it still doesn’t seem like enough. I have spent almost every beautiful afternoon in the past 2 months working or studying. I normally don’t see the sunlight until dusk around 7pm unless it’s Wednesday and then I drive to school in the dark morning and drive home at 10pm. Something that makes me laugh every time I think about it is how much our professors and other faculty try to drill the idea of “self care” into our brains. I laughed in the face of my field liaison when she asked me how my “self care” was. Seriously, do they remember what it was like to be in grad school? Something happens to teachers between the time they are in grad school and become a professor. I think it’s their ability to be realistic. There is a good chance that it could just be social work professors though too, ‘cuz it seems like everyone in this field is very idealistic. Self care to me is coming home and not having to worry about the 10 page paper due the next day not ” just looking out the window for 5 min. at the pretty sunshine and hearing the birds chirp.”

I am very thankful I have a internship I enjoy this year though. I am interning with the home health department of Children’s Hospital and I have an incredible field supervisor. I am excited about all that I am getting to learn through this internship.  I think the most stressful thing for most people in my class is the idea that if we make anything below a “B” we are thrown out of the program and not allowed to come back. You make a B in 2 classes and you are guaranteed almost no wiggle room. That is stressful as heck too when you are considering that this is grad school and not just undergrad, when you have multiple times to redeem yourself. I don’t make friends easily when it comes to my professors either. Social work is a very liberal major. This has been great for me in the aspect that I have learned how to defend my beliefs and understand what I believe that much better. Normally, I can speak out once or twice in class about something that doesn’t sit well with liberals, and I will get a cold shoulder from my professors. Trust me, it’s happened multiple times. The professors that are the best are the ones that might believe one way but encourage students to speak their minds but have reasonable and valid points behind it. Thanks to Dr. Hall and Dr. Theriot for teaching this way. All you others, stop being paranoid democrats when I say something about FoxNews. Our field coordinator said we should all try to think of the abundant amount of free labor we are giving to agencies by calling them internships that it is not merely “paying your dues” but a “free learning experience.” While, I love my internship, pretty sure $200 was paid for me to do this internship and pretty sure it costs me to give up a lot of actual work hours. Thankfully, my hearing loss is working to my advantage and state is paying my actual dues to attend school, but besides that, “a free learning experience?” Seriously? A guy in my government class got so frustrated that our professor was taking time to explain to GRAD SCHOOL STUDENTS what a “fill in the blank” question is for the upcoming test, that he raised his hand and said, “I’m leaving class to go spend my time doing something productive.” HA! It was an epic moment and our professor’s face turned about 10 shades of red. Anyway, I think I needed a blog to just vent a bit.

I don’t mean to focus on all the bad, because in reality, these 2 years are going to do more than I can imagine for me in the future… hopefully. Fingers still crossed. I am thankful for the opportunity to even attend grad school. Having a job that I absolutely love at the school bookstore is the best because I throw myself into work when I am there and my organization skills are at it’s finest. These past 2 weeks have the been the busiest and hardest by far, but they have also been the 2 weeks that I have organized the entire Adidas stock room. Some of you might have followed my twitpics on Twitter about this, but this doesn’t seem like a big deal until you work at the bookstore or had known what it was like prior. Organization is like my outlet to school stress and I have the perfect job to utilize this. My bosses and Adidas rep were even impressed this weekend with all my hard work and it totally made me feel good. Now it’s time to start a new week which includes, 1 cancelled class (puts the biggest smile on my face), Justin Bieber’s Christmas cd being released, and Homecoming!

“I try to take one day at a time, but most of the time, multiple days attack me all at once.”