How to handle stress

Tim of Families Again checked in again with this week with some good questions for the Men's Monday Meme:

How do you deal with stress? Is there really a good way to do it? Is there a Biblical way? Is there a medical way?

Generally I don't deal with stress well. There are basically 2 ways to deal with stress outside of the biblical way externalize it or internalize it. Basically to me that means give yourself high blood pressure or give it to someone else. I tend to do both. This past month my daughter has been learning the biblical antidote to stress found in the 23rd Psalm:

1 The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.2 He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters.3 He restores my soul; He guides me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake.4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You have anointed my head with oil; My cup overflows.6 Surely goodness and loving kindness will follow me all the days of my life, And I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

Such a simple stress reliever! I remember a comic strip I read the year I graduated High School. It was the comic strip Kudzu by the late Doug Marlette. The real star of the strip was the Reverend Will B. Dunn. In this particular strip Dunn is reading the 23rd Psalm in a modernized version. He reads: The Lord is my therapist. I shall not freak out.

Funny at the time, but actually a pretty good dynamic equivalent translation. I tend to freak out a lot while trying to educate my children. God's "therapy" is to restore my soul.

One way to increase stress in your life is to put undue and arbitrary pressures on yourself and family. Sometimes we can even take the things in our life that relieve stress and twist them in a way that increases stress. For example, I noticed that Tim of Families again is a daily blogger and part of NABLOPOMO (National Blog Posting Month). In my second month of blogging, February 2009, I tried my hand at NABLOPOMO and it was horrible for me. I felt under so much pressure to blog each and every day. No one forced me to blog each day, but I took that stress on.

These days my blog is what I intended it to be a creative and emotional outlet. It's been almost a week in between posts. I have plenty of topics I want to get to, but I am not putting that extra stress on myself or my family. To See this Weeks Men's Monday Meme click here.

Next Time: Schemers

Now it's the Cubs Turn

There are 5 major professional sports teams in the city of Chicago. In 1985 the year I turned 21 none of these teams had won the championship in their league in my lifetime. The 1985 Bears took care of that very quickly and defeated the New England Patriots in early 1986 in the Super Bowl. 5 and 1/2 years later the Chicago Bulls led by Michael Jordan won the NBA championship and did so again 5 more times in the next 7 seasons. In 2005 my beloved Chicago White Sox won their first World Series since 1917.

Tonight the Chicago Black Hawks defeated the Philadelphia Flyers 4-3 in overtime to win their first Stanley Cup since 1961.

As I type this, people are shooting off fireworks in celebration in my small suburban neighbor hood. Congratulations Hawks! Now there is just one Chicago team left to win the championship in their sport, the Chicago Cubs. Now that the Hawks have broken through maybe the Cubs will be next.

Good help and a good book are hard to find.

My wife and I both love books. She loves reading them and I love having them. See. I'm a keeper and she's not. Don't get me wrong she's definitely a keeper. She's worth keeping around and then some, but she doesn't need to own a book once she's read it. I probably have 100 or more books at home that I have never read. She probably read 100 books this year that she does not own.

So when Amy read a book earlier this Spring and wanted to read it again, and now tells me she wants to own it, I knew it must something special.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett is indeed, something special. The story takes place in 1960's Jackson, Mississippi during the Civil Rights period. Stockett turns in a beautiful, poignant book that is at turns hilarious, harrowing and heartbreaking. (The alliteration society called and they want their h back.)

The Help is one of those books that tells first person narrative of the same events in multiple voices. It has been my experience that in books like theses,one of the voices is usually more realistic or fleshed out than the others. When that happens I generally wish they told us the story in one strong voice rather than adding in several lesser ones. This is not so with The Help. Skeeter, Abileen and Minnie, are all complete characters adding their own distinct pathos to the tale.

The tale itself is the story of how African American domestic servants raise white southern children from birth, often becoming closer to these children than the parents themselves. It is a story of how these 3 heroic women from diverse backgrounds begin to chronicle the good, bad and ugly of this way of life in the deep south.

When you have a story with heroes, you need villains and The Help has one of the best (worst) evil characters that I have seen in print in quite a while. Skeeter's childhood friend puts a face on racism. Hilly shows us from the first chapter that above all else she cares about keeping the lines between black and white clear, distinct and unequal. Watching Hilly ruin the lives and livelihoods of anyone who dares cross her is sobering.

Stockett does an excellent job building tension in The Help. She would bring out some snippet of character development and then let us ruminate on it for 100 pages before developing it further. There were also several unexpected twists and turns along the way.

The best part of the Help is the dialogue. Each of the main characters has a lovely way of expressing themselves rich in colloquial expressions. My favorite part was when Abileen told her young charge Mae Mobely about a special man from space, Martian Luther King, who was hated because he was green.

The first book I read during my Summer reading plan, is always the best I've read at least until I finish another. After starting with The Help, I am not sure how any books will be able to overtake this one.

Next Time: Conventional Wisdom