Within view of the end of myself

Although I am a sales manager probably 2/3 of my job is much like an operations manager and a data analyst. I work a lot with data and every bit of data I work with affects customers and affects my company's revenue. It is important to be accurate and obviously working with the data and balancing my other responsibilities can be very stressful. I trust God ultimately and I pray for help continually but with enough pressure and time it can be quite a trial and a test of faith.

I am determined to integrate the Lord into my life, family, and business. I seek him, spend time with him, and apply the principles I see in the Bible throughout my life. Those who really seek the Lord, put him first, and integrate the Lord into every area of life are not free from trials. In fact everyone in life has trials but God really uses trials in the life of the Believer to shape and mold them into his spiritual image. And, we are comforted by the passage in Romans Chapter 8 that says, "And we know that in all things God works together for those who love God and are called according to his purpose." Well, I am right now nearing the end of a very trying time- one of the most trying and painful times of my business career....

My company was recently acquired, as noted a few months ago, through this my responsibility and the complexity of my job has increased a lot. On top of that the integration of my company into our acquiring company has created a lot of difficulties, although we are actually making great progress.

So, I have some company-critical sales-related data I have been pulling together, integrating, and analyzing for several weeks. It is by far the most complex and difficult work I have ever done in my career.

To give you an analogy of what I am having to do, imagine making a huge batch of spaghetti, dividing the spaghetti and serving it in 2 bowls. Then bring the spaghetti back into one bowl and try to develop and test different methods of finding and matching each spaghetti strand to its original strand. Except this bowl of spaghetti will be the livelihood of my sales reps, my boss, myself, and many other sales teams across North America for the next year.

What is more, as I spent untold hours and nights plowing through the data I kept discovering problems with my matching method. I had to re-do the work 3-4 times. In the past 8 days I have worked all-night 3 times. Last night I worked from 8:30pm to 8:30am. All of this with April 1st looming close on the horizon which is when we need this data completed and distributed to the sales teams because it is the beginning of our fiscal year. All sales people in North America are looking forward to starting the upcoming sales year which begins in 3 days. So, in the past 2 weeks the psychological and emotional pressure has been mounting on me to get this done. The problem is that it was beyond my technical expertise and yet no one understands this enough to help me. What is more, the people I share the technical challenges with are baffled and tell me there is just no easy way to do the matching of the sales data.

I have prayed urgently and diligently for help which I do on any and all challenges. In the past 4 days I have also "rallied the troops" for me. I have called and emailed all of the strong Christians among my friends and family and have asked them to pray for me. I have believed, deep down, that the Lord would help me eventually but I have failed, and failed, to get this done correctly- and in a timely manner. All of that is happening and the technical problems I am facing are too difficult to explain to anyone. I barely understand the problems myself, much less have solutions for those problems. 2 nights ago I was exhausted and my boss was trying to be patient, and trying to be supportive, but he was getting pressure from all the sales teams to get their data. I called him after a long day of working on the data and I told him I was about to lose it. I told him I almost could not take it anymore. (this is a little embarrassing to share) I didn't want to freak him out but I was literally becoming panicky and distraught about it. I can only work on a project of this level of criticality for so long without success, especially when under so much pressure. I was calling him to let off steam because he was the only person who knew enough to be able to understand what I needed to vent about. (I found out from someone tonight that he has been saying the past couple of days that he was worried about me, I'm sure that phone call didn't decrease that worry). I can't explain it but I was beginning to break inside. It was beyond just giving up, it was like the feeling of tinges of a breakdown, partly exacerbated by the exhaustion and by working on this overall project for weeks and not being able to make it work and with pressure mounting from many groups.

You see, I have some core values that were being challenged by these several exhausting weeks. I really believe that if I work hard enough I can do anything, its literally an assumption that drives my life. Part of that is from my faith, I believe I can trust God and he will help me. But part of it is just that I have faced a lot of tasks, problems, challenges, and needs over my 9.5 years at this company and I have found that if I plow-into a problem and just work hard I can typically make it happen. I do give God the praise because I know he helps me, I know he gives me creative ideas, and the minute I find I am stuck I pray and before long I have an answer and it works out. So, I have never faced anything I could not handle before- and that is in almost 10 YEARS. So, even though I have been walking with the Lord all that time I think I still developed some pride and self-reliance.

I am sure that what God will ultimately do inside of me through this experience is not fully known by me at this time but I do think one outcome he will work in me is humility and more reliance on him.

The morning after my near-breakdown the Holy Spirit was clearly helping me. I felt peace inside. My circumstances had not changed but my heart had and people were praying for me. Something had broken inside of me, I had really been humbled as I had totally come to the end of myself and I was changed by that experience. I realized God is God and I needed to trust in him no matter how things looked.

When I woke up the next day I read my Psalm of the day and with the most profound realization and spiritual clarity I just said to God, "ok, I will trust you on this." It was such a break-through for me. My project was not any closer to being done but my heart had changed. God had won a victory in me and although nothing changed outwardly I already had a personal victory because my spirit was aligned with God. It was a spiritual offering, I really felt it pleased the Lord. (and the Bible does say without faith it is impossible to please God, trust=faith)

I wrote this little prose that morning after my commitment to trust the Lord. It summarized what had happened to me and in me:

Now I know that there are things pure persistence cannot solve.
Now I know that sometimes I need to seek counsel.
Now I know that I can be broken, I have come within view of the end of myself.
Now I know that however bad it looks, I have a choice to trust the Lord no matter what.
Now I know that God’s word is true even if my circumstances have not changed and I have
to trust even though everything else looks like I am failing.
Now I know that God can help me in any circumstance even if I AM failing.
I know all of this because in the midst of this trial the Holy Spirit is somehow giving me strength
in the midst of it. Somehow, and without any evidence I am able to choose to trust in the
Lord right in the middle of a battle that is not in my favor.
Now I know that I need God and that I can trust God.
Now I know what it means when the Psalm says, “Before I was afflicted I went astray but now
I obey your word”.