mistake cost 3 hours

Ever make one of those mistakes that cost you a lot?  I made one like that last Thursday night.  I was working late at a clients office, against my 2014 Goals, against everything I told my client, against my wishes, against my body screaming out for my bed, against everything, I worked until I heard the rest of the team leaving the office at 10pmCST and then realized that I was upstairs and they might not know that I was here and they would be setting the alarm on me.  Ugh.  That can't happen. Since I am not an employee, I don't have a code.  The last thing I need is the alarm going off. I rapidly made work to gather my things and head right behind then.  I got home at 11.30pmCST grabbing some Arby's right before getting home.  I knew I needed to eat, even if it wasn't food on my diet and I really just wanted to crawl in bed.  

I woke up two hours later.  No more sleep to happen.  I had pushed past that internal body clock telling me when to go to bed.  When that happens, I pay the consequences, my adrenal fatigue will hit me with pay back that brings you to tears.  

As I lay there beating myself up, I jerked.  No.  Don't tell me.  I left the files on my desk!  No God, No!!!  I jumped up, I dug through the stuff I had left in my car and not taken the time to unload.  Nope.  It wasn't there.  Dug through my leather messenger bag to see if had the files. Nope.  Not there either.  

At this point, I was even more stressed out and frustrated with myself then I had been with working late.  This was a big mistake to make!!!  I didn't have the allotted time in my schedule it was going to take to retrieve the files, its a 75-90 minute drive one way to this clients office.  The files left were ones that were supposed to be worked on this weekend to finish a project and return it when I went back for onsite this next week.  The reason it was so critical is that I am only scheduled to be working one day this next week, instead of two like normal, due to heading out of town to my conference out of state.

I tell myself there is nothing I can do now. I will have to deal with the cost this was to me of 3 hours lost.

You see I have a conference to attend this week (Thursday - Saturday).  Being gone for a few days with the number of deadlines stacked up against January 31st, particularly W2s and 1099s and a project for a local church whose accounting is anything but orderly, is not the best timing for me.  However, I have been working steadily at trying to complete the tasks in bite size junks and plan some dinner dates with friends so that I get a bit of down time.  However, I knew that if I didn't work today, I would be stressed returning from my conference and that would make the days up until the January 31st Deadline really hard.

So, today, I decided it was best to not take a day off and head back to my clients office and do the work I would have brought home with me.  Therefore I opted to get up at a decent hour today, deal with the mistake I made and the cost of time, gas and working on a Sunday for my mistake and bite the bullet and get the work done.  I arrived at 10.30am and worked until 4.30pm.

In reflecting, God still loves me though I made a mistake that cost me 3 hours.  If God can give me grace, I need to give myself grace.

Awwwhhhhh, lessons sometimes are hard.  But if learned, they are worth the pain.