In my second year as a working single adult, I’m still relatively new to the workplace but I am already experiencing how difficult it is to maintain integrity and work with all of my heart “as if serving the Lord, not men” rather than just the man (although I have to say, I do appreciate my bosses Yonas and Jeffrey immensely and am grateful for the crash course in family business 101 – also known as working here). Often, I find myself having to create work for myself to keep my hands busy, which is great because it allows me to engage in my creative side while trying to learn more about how exactly this business operates. I mention that because over the past couple of months, it’s been really easy for me to get into this rut where I dread coming in to work because I feel like I just sit here for 8 hours and then go home, and come back and do it all over again. But I’m reminded of where I was two years ago, an almost graduate who along with my classmates faced the challenges of job searching with an economic downturn on the near horizon. I have a job, and I should be grateful for the opportunity to worship through my work.
“Iris, can you interview her? My English is not good…”
I had just created for myself some more work - evaluating our customer service by our response to customer complaints (because according to the reports I've been translating this morning, the response has been zero, or my colleagues forget to record the responses. But anyway...) I turned around to face the speaker, a woman in my department. Standing next to her desk was a woman wearing skinny jeans and a white t-shirt with a brown mouse’s face on it, with black hair cropped close to her head. I’ve overheard two of my roommates who teach English here at our company interviewing women who want to work in Canada as caregivers, but have never given the interviews myself. “Do you have specific questions that you want me to ask her?” I asked my colleague, whose only response to continue to sit smiling at me. That was my cue to plunge right in with whatever questions I could think of off the top of my head: “What is your name? Where did you work? What did you do? Where did you learn English? Where do you want to go? What do you want to do there?”
Her name is Nina. I was trying to talk slowly but some of my questions elicited blank stares before an actual response. She worked in Malaysia for two years as a domestic worker, “cleaning the house, washing the car, feeding the dog…” and in Saudi Arabia for two years, as a caregiver for the elderly. “I learn English in Malaysia,” and she wants to go to Hong Kong through our company to work as an elderly caregiver again, like she has worked overseas before, to support her family. She has a husband, and a twelve-year-old daughter. “I want to work in Hong Kong for my family’s future.” I wasn’t able to ask her what she had in mind for her family’s future because at that point, another one of my colleagues was waiting to take her upstairs to Overseas Marketing for another interview.
I thought of her daughter. If Nina worked overseas in years consecutive to one another, her daughter might have been somewhere around 8 years old, or younger, when she first left to work overseas. I was thinking of how much Nina loves her family, and would do anything to spend more time with her husband and daughter – but she loves them so much to leave, to find work overseas and to work to support them. How does her daughter feel? I can imagine that she wants so much to spend time with her mother. Spend time cooking with her, watching tv together, maybe fighting together now that she’s older, and maybe just sitting and being with one another.
I write about this because I have been thinking a lot lately about family and how it functions, and about work. My parents moved to the United States before I was born, and I think I only know half of the struggles they faced while getting established in a new place, if that. My mother, a nurse, worked long hours at the hospital to support our family, and some of our extended family members. My father would work during the daytime and stay with me at home while my mother was working the evening shift. I remember sitting on my mother’s lap one day when I was 5, after lunch as she was preparing to leave for work. I had just eaten a chocolate fudgesicle, and sitting with her was the best thing in the world. And then she had to leave. I remember feeling so sad, and I heard her say the words, “but I have to go to work…” even though now I am more than certain that she would have given anything to take a day off and stay with me.
My father still works the second shift, at the power plant at Western Michigan University. Someone interviewed him for a newsletter at Western a while back, and he is the same person to everyone else as he says he is. He works, goes to church, loves working in the yard, and loves his wife and daughters. It’s been very difficult to live for part of my life with my father away in the evenings when my sister and I were at home doing our homework and practicing our instruments. Over the years, I have questioned why such a schedule and why such hours. I remember when he first got the job at Western after a period of unemployment in the mid-90’s. It was quite an adjustment at the time, and I remember how hard it was to think that it felt like I wouldn’t be able to see my father as often as before, or at least during my waking hours.
Coming here to Indonesia, I have a greater assurance that everything in our lives happens for a purpose. I hear many stories like Nina’s, working here at a human resources management company. And I told Nina’s story because it reminds me of the people on the other side of my own story – my parents. I’ve become somewhat embittered because of the lack of closure and understanding about why certain things in my life happened the way that they did. But I realize that everything in my life has happened for my good, that “all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose…” (Romans 8:28) Because things happened the way that they did, with parents working hours that I have disliked more or less and my limited perspective on those situations at the time, I understand much better the people filtering in and out of the Lokal Marketing department in search of jobs overseas.
I mention this because it has also been greatly challenging to have a heart of compassion for these people from all over Indonesia, with their educations and options so limited that they must find work overseas, and towards my colleagues. Things don’t work the way I think they should, as I am accustomed to in the American workplace; interpersonal interactions also do not function in the Western ways that I am used to. I realize that thinking this way has hardened my heart, as pride tends to do. This morning on the way to work, I was reading Matthew 27, which chronicles the crucifixion of Christ and I felt challenged at the thought, “For whom was it that Christ died?” in our morning meeting as I was staring at the faces of my colleagues, including the one who asked me to interview Nina shortly after that meeting. Makes me think of these words, “Oh kneel me down again here at Your feet, show me how much You love humility…” and how much I want that heart, especially as someone who is living here as opposed to just visiting.
And finally to wrap it up, I wrote this to reiterate the fact that I understand – or I understand better. Work was my parents’ way of expressing their love and challenges me to do the same. Also, today is my father’s birthday, and I wish so very much that I could celebrate it with him. Thanks Dad (and Marme) for your love. And if you’re not either of them and want to read a little bit more about my father from that newsletter I mentioned above, click here and see page 4. Happy Birthday, Dadipogi.
