I have emerged from what has been a busy and challenging time at work. The past three months (particularly the last month and a half) have been extremely trying, not merely due to the number of hours spent working (I am not so tolerant of the late nights and weekends and sleep deprivation) but mainly because of an inordinate amount of stress and anxiety due to less than ideal work/team relationships and outrageous client demands. On a daily basis, I would wonder, "When will this end?" and "What are my exit options?" and "Why am I doing this to myself, and to us?" A few illustrations: crying a couple times a week in my office was not unusual, the constant dread of another work day (or another demanding e-mail on my blackberry) and finishing nearly two large bottles of Tums in this period of time.
The purpose of this post is not to linger upon those months, however, but rather to emphasize the word "emerged" above. Yes, the light at the end of the tunnel has appeared, and now I have a little time to reflect and process some of the lessons learned. Quite frankly, prior to this, I'd never had to deal with difficult people and situations in the work context - this was a true initiation. I couldn't believe what a constant complainer/whiner I had become (or really was) ... and that I could be capable of feeling so much anxiety even when I thought I believed that God was in control. And I struggled, really struggled, with showing love to a difficult person when I all I wanted to do was curse him! But God's hand was under me the whole time and it was during this time that I found myself really praying and desperately seeking his comfort and intervention. It seems that he wanted to shake me out of my complacent self-dependence, and to show me a little about loving "enemies." (I realize now that I am far from that place!)
The following words are some food for thought as I continue to consider the purpose and meaning of my chosen work and life:
"No matter how ruined man and his world may seem to be, and no matter how terrible man's despair may become, as long as he continues to be a man his very humanity continues to tell him that life has a meaning... Part of the meaning still escapes us. Yet our purpose in life is to discover this meaning, and live according to it. We have, therefore, something to live for. The process of living, of growing up, and becoming a person, is precisely the gradually increasing awareness of what that something is... each individual also has to work out his own personal salvation for himself in fear and trembling. We can help one another to find out the meaning of life, no doubt. But in the last analysis the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for "finding himself." If he persists in shifting this responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence. You cannot tell me who I am, and I cannot tell you who you are. If you do not know your own identity, who is going to identify you? Others can give you a name or a number, but they can never tell you who you really are. That is something you yourself can only discover from within." - Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
(Merton then proceeds to discuss that we find ourselves only by loving God with all of our heart, soul and strength and loving our neighbors as ourselves.)
In addition, I have often returned to this quote as a reminder:
"Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love." - Reinhold Niebuhr
