It's 3 am, and I am currently being mocked by my Peace mug, wearing my work clothes, and debating whether I should lay in my bed and continue to struggle to sleep. Why am I here pulling an unnecessary late night? Well, probably because stress is the emotion I love to live in.

You see, on most nights I lull myself to sleep by planning my day and thinking through how the next day is going to go. However, there are those times when doing this causes me to stay awake until ungodly hours of the night typing up blogs when I should be going through sleep cycles 2-4 (and REM) over and over again. And as I continue to think through all of this mess I keep coming back to the fact that it is all because of the lack of peace in my life.

To be completely honest a little bit of stress is what keeps me going. I kind of enjoy the thrill of not being 100% sure if everything is going to go the way it should, but I have to be on my A game to make sure that it does. However, that is how I spent all of last semester, then this summer ended up being a bit more of that than expected, and looking forward to another year filled with that kind of stress. A little part of me is kind of dragging already dreading all of the stress that will come, and the rest of me is too worked up to even allow myself to stop and even pretend that it will all be okay.

So, what this means is that I stress buy a planner in hopes that it will somehow magically relax me, and then realize that there is a bigger issue here. You see my mind has been a whirlwind of what is next, how can I cross off more tasks from my to-do list, and how can I do things better? However, I went into this year clutching the word "peace" stating that this is the word that would define my year.

The dictionary describes peace as, "freedom from disturbance; quiet and tranquility. a quiet and calm state of mind. " However, that is not exactly how I would describe my year thus far. It has been filled with a lot of crazy surprises and a good amount of ups and downs. However, the things that fill my year have nothing to do with the peace that I wanted to describe 2017.

I mean, there is no way to control life enough to make sure it goes smoothly and is completely peaceful, but the way that you allow yourself to handle these different things that rock your world can change everything to be peaceful or not. You decide whether last minute additions to your work to-do list will cause you to go into panic mode or if you will take a deep breath and do what you can and leave the rest for when you are better equipped to handle it. You also decide whether situations that you are not prepared for will cause you reeling for days or if you will realize your mistake quickly and move onto the next thing.

It is your choice whether or not you can say that you are in a "quiet and calm state of mind" while everything all around you is falling apart.

So, as you start to order your college books, dust off the planners you have been ignoring all summer, and get ready for some crazy, stress-filled times, remember that even in the midst of all the crazy you have the choice to be in a place of peace. Also, I want you to know that I will enjoy my $73.50 planner that I have been mulling over for months.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. John 14:27