Peace in the Storm
Buzz … Buzz …
My ringing phone pulled me from sleep with little effort. In addition to being a light sleeper, I’d spent the evening awash with tension. I was on call for the weekend and all calls to the office came to my cell phone.
Voice groggy, I mumbled my way through the call. Unable to go back to sleep, I stared into the dark and remained wide awake when the next call came in around 2 a.m. With heightened anxiety, I listened to the employee at the other end who wasn’t sure she could make it to her shift the next morning at 7 a.m.
What am I going to do if she can’t work? Who will agree to cover a shift on Christmas Eve?
Luckily, the employee called back a couple of hours later and confirmed that she would be at work. I sighed with relief, but it was too soon. Hours later, I dealt with another crisis, this time someone had missed a shift and didn’t even bother to call it in.
“Why are you letting them do this to you?” my sister asked as I fretted about the fallout at work.
My husband was out of the country, so my kids and I spent Christmas weekend with my sister and her family.
I shrugged. “What choice do I have?”
For about six months, starting in August 2016, I found myself in the midst of a challenging situation. I battled a difficult boss and a hostile work environment. I spent my days on edge, wondering what mistake I would be blamed for next. I spent my nights worrying about what the next day would bring. I barely slept. I wrote coded posts on Facebook, in an attempt to express my angst and despair. Eyes dripping, cheeks wet, I spent the first 30 minutes of every day crying and praying for relief, for grace, for direction. Anything! Anything to get me out of the unbearable situation I’d found myself in.
To call those days challenging is a gross understatement. Finally, I reached the end of my rope.
I’ll just quit.
I’d been applying but didn’t have any job lined up. Still, for my sanity and health, I decided to resign and freelance for a while before figuring out the next step. But, I needed to find a way to cope until my time was up. A colleague encouraged me to pray and make declarations about what I wanted to see in my life and my environment.
As I began that exercise, God showed me what I needed to do:
I had to rise above my emotions
You see, I reacted to every negative thing at work, letting emotions fuel my distress and sending me deeper into despair. To protect myself, I hid my pain behind a carefully constructed wall. Any query from my nemesis was met with a glacial smile, a one-word answer and zero reaction.
I will never shed another tear because of this job, I promised myself.
I may not have cried at work again, but still I suffered. I suffered because I gave someone else power over me, power to influence my mood, my actions…my attitude.
“What’s the point of my Christianity if I treat people the way they treat me?” I asked myself.
Rise above, God whispered to my heart. And so I did. Or tried my best to. I began acting like myself again. I found my smile. I chatted with my coworkers. I stopped letting my emotions control me, and do you know what? My heart eased and I found a measure of peace.
I needed to sanitize my thought life
I’d heard and seen so much negativity that my thoughts spiraled downward with each depressing day. If I wanted to climb out of that pit, I needed to change what I heard. Sometimes, well-meaning people see it as their duty to keep us informed of all the negative things happening around us.
“This person said this,” or “that person did that.”
Those words and images form the basis of our thought life and the more negative they are, the darker our outlook.
Why do you think Jesus told us in Philippians 4:8 to think only on things that are pure, lovely and of good report?
I chose to tune out negative things and focus as much as I could on what was good and wholesome.
I had to identify my source
Ultimately, I had to remind myself that everything I am and have was given to me by God — the Maker of heaven and earth. My fate lay in His hands, not in any man’s. Reiterating this fact helped me replace my negative thoughts with the positive energy that came from knowing that no matter how far I fell, I would land in His arms.
Shortly after, God opened a door to a great job and I left my employer on a positive note. I even consulted with them for a few weeks until my replacement was fully trained.
These days, the battles we face are different, with COVID-19 running rampant across the world, social unrest over police brutality and real uncertainty about the future. As we navigate a much-changed world, I pray that we all find peace and rest in the midst of chaos. My heart aches for all who are grieving. May the God of comfort heal hearts like only He can.
Stay inspired,