thank you for your prayers, somehow i lived

oh my goodness i feel a million times lighter although i feel some sort of feeling that i guess i can only describe as residual anxiety... does anyone else get that?  it's like it's still too fresh in my mind for myself to not be so wound up.  i just had to manually untense my shoulders.  yes, i know that sounds awkward.  ugh... just had to do it again.

i feel like i should tell you how it went.  similar to what you do when you get a research grant or something.  i really wouldn't know how that goes because i never got any sort of grant ever, BUT i do remember in college one time that my roommate sawah had to do something of the sort... i think.  sawah, you can comment and correct me.

well, i've been unable to enjoy my life for the past (or is it passed?  $5 to the first person to comment with the correct grammar. i have no intention of paying you.) six weeks or however long it's been since you-used-to-be-my-friend-but-now-you're-on-my-scary-list-angie asked me to give a relief society lesson.  and this past week was especially bad.  and then last night at the stanford football game there was about four minutes left until half time and it dawned on me again and i got that "i want to throw up" feeling.  well, that feeling stayed.  and this morning it was accompanied by the "i want to cry and die at the same time" feeling.  really, i got tears in my eyes about 30 minutes before i was supposed to teach.  how many times has honey heard me say "i want to die" in the last 24 hours?  too many to count.

k, well, luckily there were tons and tons of really long announcements which is highly unusual for our relief society.  i was so scared i would have a full 45 minutes but i think i actually got up there with less than 25, but i was too nervous to really look at the clock or remember the time.  i gave my opening little section and had someone quote the sixth article of faith and a few people read scriptures.  and then i split the class in six groups and assigned them each a section from the manual and gave them five or seven minutes to discuss it and read the scripture references.  by the time that was done it was 1:45 and church only goes til 2:00 and we're supposed to end early for a hymn and closing prayer!  wow!

so one by one a spokesperson from each group took a few minutes to share what they'd discussed in their groups.  and i think i barely said a sentence between each one.  i just let them all teach the lesson for me!  after the last person finished i had another flash of fear because i still had to explain the last third of the lesson.  but i looked at the clock and it was already 2:03!  holy cow!  so i said something like "the last two sections of the lesson are about christ visiting the americas and apostacy" but i'm just going to cut the lesson right there because we're already three minutes over."  and then i quickly bore my testimony about how our church is christ's church restored in these latter days and amen and DONE!

and then i breathed.  oh my goodness hallelujah!

and of course like everyone said in their comments, everyone rushes up to you and tells you what a great lesson it was and how you looked to calm and comfortable and blah blah baloney.  i could delusionally believe that or just realize that i have really nice friends.  i choose the later.  i don't care if they're all lies.  i still appreciate them because they come from the heart.  ha.

on the way home i was giving honey the play by play on it all and was pretty surprised when i realized that i didn't use a single bit of my preparation or knowledge of the lesson.  i'd enlisted so much class participation that i barely said ten sentences.  seriously, ten.  and they were all spaced out.  alot.  i'd read the lesson probably six or seven times.  i had arrows, circles, notes in the margins, underlined quotes, etc.  i didn't use a single bit of it in my lesson.  but i thoroughly enjoyed learning about it and feel like i benefited from it much more than i would have anticipated.  i mean, i really really studied it.  and i'm not at all good at studying.  but i can tell you for sure... lesson 16... i know it.

so thank you times a million billion for all of your thoughts and well wishes but most importantly for all of your prayers.  i am convinced that that is the reason for the outrageously long announcements and tons of class participation as well as me not puking, crying, dying, or any other surely likely occurrence.

my heart is overflowing.  i sure do love you all.