Rough Week and God's Incredible Grace

I've been having a week straight out of Hell. Workload, other stressors, but mostly work. Too much to do, too many deadlines, too many difficult or demanding customers, too many things that need to be done NOW...and there simply aren't enough hours in a day, ears on my head, or arms attached at my shoulders. Quite literally, my back and shoulders ache like crazy...and I don't do manual labor!

Weird dreams at night, unable to sleep a couple nights, dragging most of the week...in spite of the craziness at work.

Yesterday I hit my breaking point and was literally hanging by a thread. Then at the end of the evening, while getting a voice mail in which a hysterical customer was (wrongly) reaming me out with much profanity, I looked over at my computer and saw a notification that I had a new assignment..with only minutes to go before the end of my day, with a callback that needed to be made IMMEDIATELY and other work needing to be done IMMEDIATELY. All this JUST after I had finished thanking God for the small grace of no new assignments that afternoon, thinking I was at least through Thursday. But Thursday hadn't ended.

I was nearly in tears when I left work, all the way home. I let my dogs out, and when I came back in with them, realized that somehow, my Shepherd had completely taken the folding door to the furnace room off the track...the whole door was hanging at a drunken angle.

I'm at a loss...finally managed to get the thing in a track, but not correctly so while the base is in place, I can't fully close the doors any longer. I think I'm too short to reach in and do this correctly.

At the time I was thinking I just wanted to stay home and relax, but then I felt the anger rising, all the while the dog looked at me guiltily. I fed them and left, realizing that I had to go straight to the source of all grace....Jesus.

I got to the chapel and was so stressed I couldn't even CRY! Usually when I'm at that point, I walk in the door, say "Jesus" and I become a puddle, give him everything, and leave feeling better, if not a bit sheepish.

But last night, nothing. I just desperately prayed, offered Jesus everything and told him that I couldn't take ANY MORE.

I got to work this morning, my heart still in my throat. I opened my computer only to find a note from my boss about yet ANOTHER thing that had to be done IMMEDIATELY.

I just put my head down and begged for mercy...please, God...no more. I'll do my best, but I can't take any more than this. Quite literally, I was at the point that if one more thing was piled on me, I might have just walked off the job.

So I went about my day, trying not to cry.

Now, at the end of the day, I look back and realize that today, I did not get one single assignment. I cleaned several things off the proverbial plate and put out a few fires. I'm still overwhelmingly buried, but God's hand was clearly upon me. I don't know when it happened, but I know that for most of the day, I didn't feel like crying...not that I had time with my shoulder to the grindstone!

Today, the Lord gave me a HUGE dose of grace, and tonight, I need to go to Mass and thank Him. Thank you to those of you who knew of my rough week and prayed for me, thanks to St. Jude, St. Joseph, and St. Anthony, always the Blessed Mother, and forever, to Jesus.

It wasn't ME that got ANYTHING done today...it was God. Were it not for him, I would have turned back to dust on the spot. Once again, all praise and glory to God!