A Special Lent Offering When Work Gets Us Down

Work can get us down sometimes. Ideally we're not always facing a miserable or even a tough day on the job. (Maybe some of us are more often than others.) But the bad can trade places with the good pretty quickly. We enjoy the good like a surfer might enjoy a great wave. But we're not always riding the crest of the wave like an expert surfer, gliding towards the shore. Occasionally a wave will simply flip us over. Ideally, we can manage the spills without too much injury or suffering. But sometimes not.

Our C-Virus Mess hasn't been one giant wave of misery - I hope - for most of us. But maybe it has been. If you lost your job and can't find another, you've taken a spill. Maybe you're treading water with government benefits. That's not so bad - maybe. I've had a few spells out of work over the years. It wasn't the end of the world. But even as I managed things OK, I preferred working to being out of work.

Maybe your business has had a tough time dealing with the "lock-down" economy. Ours has been relatively unaffected. But many businesses have taken the brunt of rough tides and rogue waves brought on by government's deciding the only way to address the C-Virus pandemic was to make doing business impossible, or at least extraordinarily difficult. 

But even without our current Mess, a day at work may take many forms, some of them unappealing, some downright awful. The unappealing can come from tasks we just don't enjoy doing, The awful comes in many forms: bad boss, annoying co-workers, temperamental customers, unpleasant, ungrateful clients, and so on. If you've worked any length of time - whether as employee or business owner - you know all about this. Even the best jobs and best businesses come with such days. 

And we haven't even included those days when we trudge to work with physical pain or sickness. Combine with overall bad days and you start wondering why you got out of bed. At the very least, it can get us down. When those down days give us a good gob smack, it's time to be grateful, especially during Lent.

Grateful?

Of course. We Catholics talk about "offering up," right. So isn't this good solid "offering up" material? Life takes a left turn, or your body says "Stay in bed!" or you're simply feeling at the end of your rope for any of the myriad reasons we just considered. But here you are, sitting securely in your captain's chair, keeping the ship of state - your job/your business - going. The winds howl, the rumble of thunder and a few frightening flashes of lightening deafen and blind you. But instead of running below deck, you look at your watch, check your compass, and fight to keep the bow heading towards your destination, doing your best to get there in one piece on time.

Okay, so every bad day isn't so dramatic. Some are simply like a heavy wet blanket weighing us down, clouding our brain, making it hard to breathe. But whatever the down day's particular character, whatever the circumstances you're dealing with, you stick to it. And in doing so, you turn to God and offer it all up.

"Dear Lord, You see what's going on here today. The day's not going well. In fact, it's been pretty awful. Between work and my not feeling well, it's just been tough to attend to my duties with diligence and persistence. Even simple tasks that I toss off without a second thought almost seem like I'm solving a quadratic equation (and You know how I was never good at math!).

"But I'm not complaining. I'm bringing all this up to thank You. I have so few opportunities to offer up really difficult challenges, really bad days. But here I am, my work weighing a ton, getting me down, wondering whether I should just toss in the towel. So You must have read my mind giving me this especially difficult down day.

"If You expected me to make an even bigger mess of things - and why shouldn't You? - well, I'm just going to offer it all up - all of it: this down day, the struggle to make things go as they ought, despite how I feel. I'll even back track and fix any mistakes I make because I'm not at the top of my game and offer that up too.

Oh, and lest You think I forgot: I'm especially grateful that You've blessed me with this chance to make my penitential offering during Lent."

...which makes our offering up a kind of "bonus" offering up. It can become part of our special penance during Lent.

We don't want our work to get us down. But when it does, we can make something good, even uplifting, out of it. 

We adore Thee O Christ and we bless Thee. Because by Thy Holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world.