the music's much too loud

just when my head seems set to fall off my neck it's so heavy and full and when i've never been so confused about everything in my life and when i feel like crying every two minutes, my parents are all we think this week you need to step back and reassess the way you spend your time alix you can't do everything alix you have to spend more time at home alix you're going to regret this later alix it's detrimental to your health alix you're not dedicating enough time to your uni work alix let alone your family alix.

what they mean to say is don't spend so much time doing church stuff.

i was really proud of myself, because even though my head was bubbling with anger and my heart was consumed with pain at their lack of understanding about the importance of spending time with god and his people, i just said mhm nice and calm when they asked if i understood what they were saying.

but a little bit of doubt crept in, the door creaking at the back of my head. because i'm really feeling like i just can't deal at the moment. i'm so confused that i don't even know what i'm confused about. when people ask me how i am i am genuinely lost for words. maybe i am doing too much? uni is seeming so big. last semester i got by without doing any readings, but i just can't afford that this term. the way all my assessments are set out seems so simple printed neatly in black ink on slightly crumpled white paper, but in reality--when juxtaposed with all my other commitments--it seems insurmountable. even though i know that whenever i feel like i can't do something, god carries me, i know almost as completely that i'm going to be hanging on by my fingernails to the cliff of the d average. my fingernails have always been thin and brittle. what if i fall? what satisfaction it was to bring home hds last semester. but what if my parents are proved right? what if i can't cope?

at the very moment i'm teetering on the edge of everything, my parents give me a little nudge.

usually the reassess the way you spend your time lecture leaves me annoyed but unmoved.
but at the moment...
at church i lead youth group on fridays, i help organise young adults social ministry on every second saturday, i lead singing every two weeks on sundays, and every sunday i'm not singing i help out with a youth group bible study before the service. i go to bible study on tuesday nights. i'm reading luke with a couple of the youth group girls during the week.
at uni i go to equip training on mondays, i poster for eu on tuesdays, i go to bible study on wednesdays, i go to eu public meeting on thursdays, and i go to studentlife on thursday nights. and i've just put my name down to get involved with walk-up ministry.
and i'm trying to keep up with and pray for five of my non-christian friends at uni, and keep up connections with heaps of friends who are at various stages in their christian walk.
and, of course, maintain my own relationship with god.

not that it's about time, or that i begrudge doing it at all (it gives me more joy than anything else), but not including hanging out with christian mates or my own bible reading and praying, that equates to almost twenty hours of christian stuff in an average week--more if i have to write a bible study for youth group or something like that. i have twelve contact hours at uni a week. i work about six to eight hours a week. i've basically given away any kind of exercise but i'm hoping to add four hours of swimming training a week to my schedule this semester.

what do you think?