"Do you like working here?"

I've never been asked that question at this job. But there I was, half a burrito made on the plate I held, listening to that question being offered me the second time today.
"Do you like working here?"
I smiled and shrugged. To be honest, I FAR prefer my old job of teaching in home school groups to food service. I really miss my position of teaching first and second graders zoology and drama. And to be brutally honest, I woke up this morning an hour before I had to go to work and spent the next five minutes whining to the Lord about how I really didn't want to go to work today, I REALLY wanted to just lay in bed and listen to the Narnia soundtrack and think about wandering the hills right outside Ipp and returning to my Hungarian host mom's kitchen laden with a bouquet of wildflowers and drinking her mint tea afterward.
However, grownups have to stop daydreaming before their mom walks in and chases them out of bed, especially when their mom lives several hundred miles away. And even though I didn't want to be at work, I wanted even less to get fired.
So I grudgingly rolled out of bed and began to get ready for the day.
But I kept praying as I went through my normal morning activities. And I found myself reminiscing back to the good ol' days in 2003 when I had just gotten back from my mission trip to Ecuador and was completely on fire for the Lord (obnoxiously so, or so I've been told) and really working hard at being totally submitted to WHATEVER (and wherever and whenever) the Lord wanted me to do, 24/7.
And I decided that I was going to try and live my workday in the same vein.
I felt a lot happier throughout the day.
Which might be why I was receiving those questions.
I wish I could say I kept up the great attitude the entire day but only made it to about the end of my shift when one of my friends at work asked me a question and I ended up griping about something that has been bugging me for a while. I apologized at the end of it and she offered up a really beautiful prayer for me after smiling and saying somewhat angelically that she appreciated knowing how to better pray for me.
*sigh*
Which it is pretty amazing being in an environment where sisters genuinely appreciate knowing how to pray for one another. And it is cool that the feeling is mutual, not just one-way. And so again, even though I felt like I was failing in my commitment that I made that morning to be just joyful and chipper and proactively serving with gladness, I was shown a measure of undeserved grace.

So not sure if any of that made sense but I thought I'd pass it on to the cyberspace and hopefully someone was encouraged by it. :-)

~Princess Ouch~