Work As A Part Of Your “Yes”–Your Yes For 2015: Day 6

Welcome to Day 6 of our “Your Yes for 2015” Adventure. If you’re joining us today for the first time, find the index of all of the days here.

Happy Day 6 friends! I hope this challenge entry finds you uplifted and rejoicing in the potential of your “Yes to God” for this New Year. A quick note of information: I am actually “on retreat” for the next few days and will as such be unavailable to respond immediately to your comments and emails. Being without wifi is a rare thing in my life these days… I’m sure I’ll learn from the experience! Just wanted to notify you that there may be a brief delay, but I continue to welcome your feedback. In fact, I’ll share that when I’ve had my ups and downs this week and felt that dangerous, “Why am I doing this Lord?” frustration begin to creep in, it’s been your kind emails, Facebook posts and comments that have helped me to sustain.

Why?

Because the Work We Do Can Be Our Amazing “Yes to God”!

I’m blessed every day to do work that feels fairly connected to my spiritual life. But I look at my husband Greg, whose work really doesn’t have anything to do with “churchy stuff”, and see his Yes in the way he gifts himself to God through those he serves. The care with which he treats his patients, the precision with which he fulfills his administrative duties, and even the way he cares for our home are all evidence of an attitude that says he cares about his work.

So today, I’d like you to ask yourself how the work you spend your days doing is a facet of your “Yes” to God and also a function of your generous giving our yourself to the world around you.

Can Laundry Be My “Yes”?

I’ll let you in on a story from my life: I hate doing laundry.

But as a wife and mom (especially of one son who seems to love to change his clothes a lot!), care for laundry is a part of my daily work. I used to begrudgingly do it with a very bad attitude. When I began to adopt my own “Yes”, I realized that I could give a more worthy “Yes” to this boring, thankless task.

I set out to more intentionally love God and my family through my work. I’ll share that reading Story of a Soul by St. Therese of Lisieux again (with “Yes” eyes) helped me to see that even this tedious job could be a form of prayer and a way of giving myself more fully to God. I put a few holy cards in my laundry room and began to intentionally pray for my family members as I sorted and folded. I added beautiful spiritual music and photos of loved ones. And my laundry room went from being someplace I hated to one of my favorite rooms in our home.

Do I still have days when the job feels thankless? A few, but they are much fewer and farther between.

So what’s your equivalent of laundry?

How does the work you do bring you into a more beautiful giving of yourself to “God” and to the world?

“Without love, deeds, even the most brilliant, count as nothing.” ― Thérèse de Lisieux

To Ponder:

Identify the most significant and frequent tasks that make up the work you do. Write them down. Consider each one carefully.
How can you give a more complete “Yes” to God and those you serve through a more intentional performance of these tasks?
In a broad sense, how would you like your work in 2015 to be your “Yes”? List at least one major work related goal (and make it SMART) that you will endeavor to accomplish this year.

Let Us Pray:

God, creator of us all, you crafted each of us uniquely to love and to serve you and the world around us. Today, we examine the work we do and the impact we can have with what we create, how we serve and what we deliver to others. Grant us the ability to better love you by more intentionally fulfilling our daily tasks. May we work with precision, with compassion, and for your glory. Amen.