Not for the faint hearted...

In my last post I told you that I was stressed. It is a strange reality in Church ministry that you often cannot control your workload. I arrived at the office this morning and had about an hour and a quarter conversation with a very upset and distressed woman. I then had to make phone calls related to that and later received an email about the topic that demanded a reply. Issues continued to crop up throughout the day with the biggest one being a request to lead a funeral for a twenty one year old son of an acquaintance on Monday.  What on earth do you say to the grieving parents? I have had a newspaper reporter asking Night Shelter questions, a couple of long phone calls about night shelter issues and I am still working on tomorrow's funeral for my 97 year old childhood minister. Add to these there are also deadline things that are part of the usual preparation that needs to be done for Sunday's service. I will cope but I just don't know how to respond when my GP tells me "You work too hard, take life easier". How?  He has never been a minister.