This week, I have experienced so many different emotions in the course of a few days on the job....excitement, fear, stress, anxiety, and confusion, to name a few. Working with refugees is a scary thing, because it's sink or swim, and if you sink, it feels like you're drowning your clients along with you. I have come home the past few nights feeling so burdened that I was afraid I might snap or cry if someone tried to talk with me....and I have not begun to tackle the truly difficult elements of my job yet. One night I was watching a movie with my new friend/co-worker, and she saw me trying to work on my to-do list. Her reaction was the best possible thing for me: she promptly threw my list and my planner across the room and forced me to simply relax instead. I can see how easily people become workaholics and why it's so hard to turn that part of your brain off when you leave the office.
These days, I have been thinking a lot about peace and how much I lack it. I am hungry for peace, for a deep soul rest that permeates my long days and busy hours, that guards my anxious mind and my hurting heart in a work environment where I daily see injustice and experience frustration at the systems of this world. My pastor recently made an interesting connection between peace and gratitude, which makes so much sense to me the more I think about it. I want to be grateful for the good things I see in this job and grateful for the opportunities I will have to change the bad things. If you are someone who prays, pray for peace and gratitude to fill my life and overflow into the lives around me.
Here's the great thing: so far, I have woken up every day feeling happy to go into work. Exhausted, yes, but determined and excited to tackle the day. Not optimistically, naively happy about somehow changing the world, but ready to do whatever I can to help transform my own tiny corner of the world. There is a great sense of contentment and joy in doing what you know you're supposed to be doing, in extending a chance for survival and hope into a person's life, in knowing that you are spending your days working towards something that is at the very heart of God. I know that positive emotions such as these can never be the motivation or the end goal of such work, or they will only lead to burnout and bitterness.... Nevertheless, they are such a blessing in this realm which often seems so bleak, a daily grace in a world where grace is so scarce. I am so helpless in all that I do without the grace and peace of Christ.
These days, I have been thinking a lot about peace and how much I lack it. I am hungry for peace, for a deep soul rest that permeates my long days and busy hours, that guards my anxious mind and my hurting heart in a work environment where I daily see injustice and experience frustration at the systems of this world. My pastor recently made an interesting connection between peace and gratitude, which makes so much sense to me the more I think about it. I want to be grateful for the good things I see in this job and grateful for the opportunities I will have to change the bad things. If you are someone who prays, pray for peace and gratitude to fill my life and overflow into the lives around me.
Here's the great thing: so far, I have woken up every day feeling happy to go into work. Exhausted, yes, but determined and excited to tackle the day. Not optimistically, naively happy about somehow changing the world, but ready to do whatever I can to help transform my own tiny corner of the world. There is a great sense of contentment and joy in doing what you know you're supposed to be doing, in extending a chance for survival and hope into a person's life, in knowing that you are spending your days working towards something that is at the very heart of God. I know that positive emotions such as these can never be the motivation or the end goal of such work, or they will only lead to burnout and bitterness.... Nevertheless, they are such a blessing in this realm which often seems so bleak, a daily grace in a world where grace is so scarce. I am so helpless in all that I do without the grace and peace of Christ.
