Survived another Sunday with social anxiety

As you can see, I lived to tell about today's church, home teaching and tithing settlement activities.
Just thought you should know.

Church was fine. I'm always hoping no one will talk to me. Saying hi is fine, a word or two is fine, but please don't stop me in the hall for a chat. Luckily, Primary saves me from being too available for that sort of thing. To be perfectly honest, I feel like I'm hiding in Primary. It's a safe haven. Since it's all about the kids, teachers are never asked to contribute. They're hardly ever called on or put on the spot. And I'm more than fine with that. I'll sign on for a lifetime Primary calling, thank you very much.

Anyway, I tried to push thoughts of home teachers and tithing settlement out of my mind all day. But of course once we got home it was all about looking at the clock to see how many minutes until they get here...tick, tock, tick, tock...and figuring out anxiety reducing seating arrangements and optimal anxiety reducing lighting, etc., etc. (We socially anxious are very high maintenance you know) haha! Luckily my husband is very understanding and lets me do whatever ritual I need to do. And although I never expressed the anxious thoughts and dread I had been feeling over the home teachers coming over or the tithing settlement meeting, he was lucky I was there at all, right?!

Moving on. The home teachers ended up being late. Ha! Isn't that always the way? As I watched the clock and mentally bit my nails, I wanted to scream,"This is why I hate home teachers!" but I didn't. I just smiled and said maybe we'd been forgotten. Which was actually my backwards wish that I instantly took back because I knew it would mean holding on to the dread another week. No thanks. But they ended up coming late.

And shocker of a lifetime, due to their schedules, they could only stay about 15 minutes. I'll take that any day. I did experience a few moments of anxiety. They asked us questions and suddenly I felt heat shoot across my face. I wondered if they could tell. I thought, "oh, no, here I go again." Somehow I spoke through it. Maybe it was the false sense of security from the "optimal anxiety reduced lighting" ha, ha. It hit me a couple times over a 15 minute period but I had to push through it, even though as I spoke I wondered if they could see the anxiety all over my face.

I survived. Next came tithing settlement.

Luckily, there was no one else waiting in the foyer when we arrived. That's another fear of mine (what does that make it? #3,683?) that we'll be trapped into socializing as we wait for our appointment with the Bishop. To my relief, we went right in. And the Bishop, as always, was very kind and really cares about the members of our ward. I kept my answers short and positive. Kind of like when you say what they want to hear, but mean it? Luckily he didn't bring anything up and we didn't offer. I'm guessing he has heard from the RS pres that I'm having a rough time, of sorts, and may know of our situation with not being able to have kids, but I wasn't going to bring it up and I was very thankful he was sensitive enough not to bring it up either.

So for now, home teaching is done for another month.
Tithing settlement is done for another year.
Church is over for another week.
But who am I kidding, as soon as I take a deep breath, it's time to brace myself to do it all over again.