"Laffoon, I'm afraid I've been thinking." "A dangerous past time." "I know" (what movie?)

I have an amazing grandma who's basically a health expert and chiropractor without a license. She's the go-to person whenever anyone in my family has a crick in the neck, a pounding head, or even a stomach ache. It's pretty nice. Something I'll probably miss when I go to college.

 But lately whenever I go to her nothing works. She once worked on me for about an hour and fourty-five minutes and as soon as I walked out of her door I felt everything just go back to how it was. It was pretty frustrating for both of us and the last time I went she finally exclaimed,

"You're like a puzzle! I can't seem to figure out what the problem is!" Which is saying something. I've never known her to not know some strange massage or health pill that won't do the trick. She usually even knows the cause of these aches so I asked her what she thought. Her reply, "High levels of concentration. It's messing up your whole system."

In other words, I think to much. That, of course, got me thinking some more. I went through my whole day and discovered she was right.

I woke up and mentally ran through what I needed to do that day. Then I went running and had a knack for making up my own music videos in my head to the songs on my iPod (I know, weird). After that I took a shower and then read my scriptures. I usually spend a good fifteen minutes on this because at EFY I learned how every verse has a cool lesson if you'll look for it.  Then I eat breakfast and usually write. This includes planning my storylines, deciding on how certain characters would react, finding clever ways to use words, deciding what parts I needed and what parts I didn't, and the like. Sometime in the day I usually practiced piano which involves thinking as well.

Basically, my mind is running full speed all day. I think its one of the reasons I talk to myself when I'm alone because those thoughts have to go somewhere. It's also why sometimes I can't go to sleep right away.

Sadly, though, it doesn't just go into hobbies. It also tends to flood into how I can improve myself. This, by itself, isn't a bad thing at all. But when you think as much as I do, things can get a little complicated. When I mess up, I think about it and think about it and think about it until I've turned a small splotch into a huge puddle. That, of course, leads to me being too harsh on myself. So then part of me tries to make me feel better and its just turns into a huge confusing battle that makes my head hurt. And only then do I start thinking about thinking too much.

It wasn't until my grandma said something that I realized how bad it was really getting. It wasn't just hurting my head, it was giving me stomach aches and knocking my spine out of whack. I was also reminded of my anxiety attacks in track that came from all of this with the physical excertion of track practice on top.

My Mom told me I needed to do more things that would let my poor brain unwind. The thing that came to mind was videogames. That, of course, found me at a store handing over thirty bucks for a new Nintendo DS game snickering to myself, "It's for my health."

But, obviously, video games don't solve much. Frightening enough, I was reminded of how closely knit the body and spirit are. It was afraid it was even beginning to do a number on my testimony.

And then my friend finished her personal progress. Funny how things that hardly relate totally relate. Our plan was to wait until we were all finished and then get our recognition medallions together. So I decided to go through my pamphlet just to doublecheck that I had done everything like I remembered. I had to look through my journal to do this.

Inside were sloppily, yet excitedly, written entries that seemed to advance with each page. The first few, written when I was twelve, were a little skeptic and general. And then they got a little deeper as my testimony began to grow. And then they got excited and full of smiley faces, flowers, and about fifty underlines underneath the phrase, "I know my Savior lives." They were simple, hopeful, and the thoughts I had thought when I wrote them somehow  found their way to my mind again. I began to feel the love my Heavenly Father had and the joy he felt as I wrote those things down as a goofy, scrawny, yet cheerful little fourteen-year-old.

But the point that came across to me the most was that they were simple. I knew, I tried my very best, and the Lord would do the rest. It seemed to be a common theme of faith throughout the whole thing.

After that, and a silent prayer of thanks, I decided to go on a walk. A walk to, stubbornly, think. I came to the realization that the way my brain worked was a gift. Good to an extent. Its what helped me make relations to weird stuff and then post it on this blog. It was what helped me make my English teacher snicker at my more-entertaining-than-educational essays. It allowed me to come up with relating quotes and scriptures I'd read before whenever I was in Seminary, making the lesson a little deeper.

But then I also realized that, though it was a gift, too much of a good thing can be bad. Summer was coming to and end soon and He knew I'd be getting caught up in college and scholarships and homework. Perhaps, before all this, there was one more lesson he wanted to squeeze in this summer.

To have a little more faith in Him and His redeeming power and not...think so much.