I would start off this blog with something like; “It’s that time of year again!” followed by a description of how this time of the year is always crazy due to certain holidays, events, or circumstances. However, I cannot bring myself to begin as such, since it seems like it is always that time of the year. You know what I’m talking about, that time where everything is piling up and your to-do list seems miles long and every time you get down time you feel like that means you are forgetting something (and you usually are)! That’s what this semester has seemed like for me, and I’m only a month in! Looking at the calendar stresses me out. I see not one free weekend! Even though I love what I do, balancing ministry and school can become overwhelming if you let it! And boy have I let it. With all the busyness that school and ministry bring, these past few weeks have been a rollercoaster of emotions! I had no time to get everything done, so I got frustrated. Little things began to make me angry. I had no patience with the people around me. That’s the thing about busy times; they are the devil’s prime time for spiritual attack. We can become so overwhelmed with all we have to do (or all we think we have to do) that our spiritual life suffers. Luckily, at the Catholic Student Center here in College Station, they have weekly adoration and, by the grace of God, in the middle of all the busyness, I signed up for an hour! But the devil almost won that too! In the midst of all my bustling around last week, I got a text last week that adoration had begun and I could start coming to my regular hour on Wednesday mornings… and I groaned. Not ANOTHER thing I have to do! Why this week God?! I’ve been keeping up with my morning prayer, isn’t that enough?! Why are you asking more of me NOW?! Knowing it was too late to try and get out of it, I went. And you know what I felt? Peace. Pure, flowing, wonderful, glorious, quiet, calming peace!!! This is what I had been searching for all this time. This is what my heart longed for and my brain needed. He just let me sit there. I didn’t try to busy myself and do anything but sit. I felt reassured and renewed, that He was telling me “Do my work and everything will work out”. I knew it would. I just knew. No stress of how, when, and where. It was all going to be ok. Many times we concentrate so much on our to-do list that we forget God’s. And the number one thing on His list is to spend time with us! Often times the more we have to do, the more we need that time with Him. And sometimes, that means to just sit in adoration and have a staring contest (He always wins, the monstrance is always too shiny not to blink). But I learned a lesson that day, and it’s one I want to stress to anyone who is finding themselves overwhelmed. There is peace in His presence. Seek it out. Just go sit at His feet and unwind. He is waiting to give us the gift of peace if we would only take the time to ask.