As a young woman, I highly identify myself as an introvert. I cannot handle highly stimulating social activities. Sometimes, I have to stay at home, work on some homework, and re-energize before my next social experience. Sometimes, the only thing I can handle is curling up inside of a blanket in a dark room for a while. So, why did God, knowing I have all these problems, place me in a stressful, highly stimulating, loud, seemingly uncontrollable at times, ministry? It's everything that I try to get away from!

I volunteer as a Children's Sunday school teacher at my church, where I teach lessons every week to about twenty or so children. If you've ever visited a children's church service, or even stepped foot into a day care or a home that has multiple children (or even just one child), you understand how instant your stress can take over.

Now, you may be thinking "yeah, it's stressful, but you can deal with it", right? Of course, I can deal with it. I only have them for a MAX of like, 5 hours a week. That's not the point of this, though. The catch to all of this is that I suffer from an anxiety disorder.

My doctor diagnosed me with Manic Depressive Disorder (Bipolar Disorder) about a year ago, but she says my "manic" episodes come in the form of anxiety attacks, rather than episodes of mania. The anxiety takes its course (it could last from a few minutes, coming and going in spurts, up until the next day or so) and then I fall into a pit of depression (this can last from an hour or up to a few days). For personal reasons, I have abstained from the use of medication because of the negative affects it has had on my body in the past.

The interesting thing I've discovered, though, is that in the span of those five hours throughout the week, those are some of the only times that my body isn't feeling the way my doctor says it's supposed to be feeling. Let me explain:

I worked at a taco stand for about 7 months (and before that a sandwich shop for a year). It was a very popular taco place, with tons of people, tons of noise, and tons of stress. It got to the point where I would have moments in which I'd nearly faint at random times from being so anxious and stressed. After my anxiety attacks, the depression part seemed to get even worse. I was extremely depressed, I stopped eating, I slept all the time, and I even lost weight (I went from being 97 pounds on average to 92 pounds). I'm already skinny enough, but my jeans started falling from my hips because I had lost weight. Eventually, I had to quit. This line of work wasn't made for people like me.

So, being in the same type of environment (the stressful, noisy, highly stimulating one), doing Children's ministry is somehow different. Why would God put me in another place that's stressful, highly stimulating, loud, and seemingly uncontrollable? God made me. He knows what I struggle with. He knows that too much stimulation without any positive outlet can lead to panic attacks or even fainting spells. So why would he put me in those places?

For me, personally, going by what the Holy Spirit has guided me to, I've come to the conclusion that when my body says no, God says yes. If God doesn't want me somewhere, he will take me away from there. That's what he did with my last job and the one I had before.

So even when my body says that Children's ministry is too stressful, or too stimulating, God says "You live by my strength, not your own." When I worked at those other places, I didn't go by his strength because He did not want me there. No matter how many times I told myself "It's good for me to have a job", I knew that I was disobeying God.

So, even in seemingly unavoidable medical conditions, my personal life with God experienced a phenomenon that I can't explain all that clearly. Because God has said "Yes!" to my life as someone who teaches Children how to worship and follow Him, He has in return given me the strength to do so, even when all the odds are stacked against me.