Early morning lessons

All to Jesus I surrender, all to Him I freely give;
I will ever love and trust Him, in His presence daily live.

Early morning lessons, albeit not sought, this morning at my house.  I will admit that over the last several months, I feel that I am forever posting this or that malady...head hurts, ulcer, blah blah blah.  I'm tired of my own organ recital, as we say in health care!  I'm not used to this state of semi-unwellness.  Certainly there's nothing alarming happening in my body, it's just that I seem to be a bit on the fragile side more than usual.  I've no doubt that I am dealing with stress in physical ways because I've not yet mastered the spiritual aspect.  Life is a classroom with graduation happening in heaven, I suppose.  Which brings me to the early morning lessons of today. 

I had what I thought was a hormonal headache at the end of last week which proceeded to stomach upset on Saturday which evolved into a stunning case of stomach flu by late Saturday night.  Yesterday was spent on the couch cat napping to make up for the sleep lost over night (when not dealing with yet more gastric issues, 'nuff said.)  Today at 3 a.m., I gave up on miraculous recovery and called in to work.  How I hate that.  And this is an especially not good time for stomach flu.

I am interviewing nurses on Tuesday and Thursday.  I am downtown at a meeting from 8-noon on Wednesday, back at work for a few hours and then leaving at 2 for an appointment at 3.  Did I mention that I have a girlfriend's retreat aka Sister's Reunion happening this week?  Yeah.  That isn't working out the way I had hoped either.  I had hoped for vacation days on Thursday and Friday to start the long weekend.  But there have been management changes at work and I am taking a long weekend for my anniversary at the end of the month.  Ultimately, I needed to choose which vacation days I was willing to give up, and understandably so.  So I will be heading Up North on Friday after work and shortening my girlfriend time by two days.  I had considered trying to sneak away at noonish on Friday to hit the road but with the day off last Friday and today, both unplanned, that is out of the question.  I'll be doing well not to work late on Friday. 

This morning my biggest source of stress is that I dread facing my boss with yet another sick day, especially with the abbreviated days already scheduled this week.  I won't pretend that I was seeking the Holy Spirit this morning, nope, I was just stressing.  The Lord had to sort of derail my obsessive frustration and sort me out.  Firstly, Margie is unable to leave town with the girls on Thursday either, so we'll travel together on Friday evening.  Shew!  I'm not glad we're missing a few days of the party but I'm more glad that neither of us will be doing the four hour evening drive alone.  If God had asked me to delay and travel with her, I would've done it in a heartbeat.  So, I guess he did, and I will.  And she, me.  Does that make sense?  Secondly, I have just now realized that the favor of my boss is a matter of the favor of God.  Yes, she's likely frustrated with me.  I'm frustrated with me.  But God can smooth that out between us, especially if I am willing to get up out of the pitiful me pit and take accountability for making it right.  Can I go in to work early a few days and stay late a few others?  Yes, I can.  And will.  And just that plan makes me feel lighter of heart. 

So I'll road trip with my girl Margie on Friday night and hopefully, we'll get our baseline inappropriate conversations and humor out of the way before we are amongst the more civilised sisters...LOL.  I'll work some longer days as a good faith gesture and will get the undone work done in that way.   I've not had some kind of miraculous deliverance from stress, just sort of started to see the details of it and perhaps, start the work of dismantling framework.

Surrender seems like the giving up of things we want.  This morning, I started to surrender the stuff that I don't want.

Not bad for an early morning lesson on a sick day.