keepin' the sabbath

dear God.

its me again, margaret.

i'd love it if you could grant me the serentity not to throttle hope tonite at work. perhaps she could get the 24 hour laryngitis?

that is all.

i'm feeling just a teensy defeated today.

by the time 8 o'clock rolled around this morning, i was not in a very church-going-mood. i'd just spent the night with what is to be my replacement trainee, *hope*. and my cheerfulness had all but gone out the door within the first 2 hours, with me kinda feeling knocked down at every pass.

i quickly discovered hope has been with this agency for over 9 years, so as she followed me around, i relaxed with the notion i wouldn't have to really detail any job specifics and was chatty, handing out my little tips and tricks of the trade for this particular house, when she informed me quite rudely that since she's "worked here so long, she thinks she knows what she's doing. that she doesn't even want this shift, and why is it again, that i am choosing to leave, making her take this?"

it was about that time that *flow* decided she really didn't care for this *hope* person at all, and refused assistance from her in any and every capacity.

:le sigh:

the fact that she's worked here for over 9 years, came up many, many, many-many times during the course of her stay, mind you. so in effort to dodge her sharp tongue thru-out the night, i tried instead, to redirect the conversation. her accent was almost french, and i wondered where she was from. we have many african and sudanese care-givers within our company; several of them, refugees. i have found so many of their stories simply amazing. she shared snippets with me: her husband is an international doctor and she herself is in her last year of study to be a urologist. that this job has simply been her income along the way.

everything i did was "ridicoooolous." it wasn't neccesary in her mind that i do hourly checks, that i provide such detailed documentation. that i clean every night. that the ladies get up so early in the morning. she blamed *ebb's* eratic sleep patterns entirely on the fact that i check on her thruout the night, insisting i am "waking her up". she had followed me around all of an hour before settling on the couch with her laptop and by 10 pm was asleep, and chose to sleep off and on until about 4 this morning. when she did wake up, it was to stare a hole straight thru me and make yet another rude comment about the way i "do things".

i tried to buffer all of this with gentle responses. "we all do things differently". i was "sure she'd settle into her own routine". "i just try to follow the company guidelines". etc....

without going into any more detail, i was entirely humbled by the time daylight rolled around. my feelings had been hurt and my spirit not a little bit wounded. she announced 2 hours before the end of our shift that she had a headache and was going home. and i hate to admit it, but the ornery troll in me wanted to shout "good riddance".

i've come to care very much for *ebb and flow* in my time here, and have taken great pride in helping to run their little house. i know its silly that i should feel put out by one persons' opinion but lets just say it would be an understatement to say i'm not really looking forward to my last night on the overnight shift, with her in tow.

a fact that is possibly even more rotten because she insists upon watching CNN all night long, when we all know i could be catching up on those crazy Kardashians or Kenny vs. Spenny.

blaaaargh.

and then my m-i-l, whom i love and adore, incidentally, woke me up this afternoon to inform me that i'm not doing nearly enough about bella's ibd issues and that she'd like to take her to the doctor herself this week, due to my busy and hectic schedule.

do you ever feel like some days you've been duct-taped to the principals office chair?

thankfully, church helped me even some of it out. the praise and worship slowly melted away the stiff joints and sour attitude i'd entered with and we had a great sermon this morning, along with guest speaker *kadeer* who is involved in campus crusade in our church and hails from east congo. he is such a beautiful and honest soul and had such an inspiring story to tell, detailing the 2 lessons he'd learned in particular: that trust is trust is trust, when it comes to God. and that it doesn't matter what you have. its what you're willing to give.

also this little tidbit:

"there are 5 frogs on a log. 3 decide to jump. how many are left?"

the answer is 5. because the deciding and the doing are entirely different things.

that speaks maybe more to me than anyone else right now, but i'm glad it did. i like those little
heart-tuggers from time to time.

this helped abit today too:

every gift is a trust placed in human hands by a holy God and it is up to each individual to develop the integrity, humility, and work-ethic to know what on earth to do with it. A gift never guarantees success. In the long run as well as the routine day-in and day-out, those with the grit to just keep doing the hard thing will often prove more effective. Gift without grit is a dang waste.

but i think i could do with a hug, all the same.