Yesterday morning I woke up with a migraine. Unless you’ve experienced one you might say something like, “Take a couple of Tylenol and get over it.” Trust me, this is something the Go-To-Lowe’s-And-Build-A-Bridge thing won’t work on. (Check March 1st post.)

If you don’t know much about migraine headaches, Google it. Maybe I’ll get a, “Oh, man, that stinks.” The scary thing is they sneak attack and tend to run in families. All three of my kids get slammed by them too.

Jim was out of town so, keeping-it-together with the nausea, I got out of bed, took some medicine, found an icepack, and finalized the blog. Then I went back to bed and, like a drunk, slept it off.

Three hours later the phone woke me up. It was my friend Debbie. I haven’t talked to her in a couple of days and she was calling just to see how things were going. I smiled. She always calls at the right time. I updated her on my three very sick family members and all the other incidentals, including my headache. We just laughed. It’s the best thing to do.

We talked about our elevated stress levels and how things were supposed to slow down and wondered when on earth that's going to happen. She said, “Suz, may I share something with you?”

“Absolutely.”

“When I woke up the other day and I was just being quiet thinking, I had a mental image of a beach, you know, that part right by the water. I was thinking about sandcastles and how they’re built. We construct them with moats and turrets and may even put a little flag on top of one of the towers. Then, when the tide comes in, it only takes a couple of good waves to wash the whole castle away,” she explained in detail.

“Oh yeah.” I was following her.

“Well, here's what I think: We build sandcastles out of stress, but God’s grace will wash it away if we stand close enough to the shore line. Don’t ask me where that came from because I don’t even like the ocean. Big things swim there,” she said seriously.

I thought that was fabulous! We laughed some more and I hung up the phone promising I’d stick a little closer to the shore line.

I got up, pushing back the migraine hangover; the worst part is over, but there’s still a fog. Since stress is a major influencer of migraines, I finally admitted to myself I had let it get the best of me. Vowing to become more aware, I turned on a hot shower. When I got in with my glasses on, I realized I might need to inch even closer to that shore line than I originally thought.

“Cast all you anxiety on him because he cares for you.” 1 Peter 5:7