I Love My Job

Those of you who know me well might read the title of this post and expect sarcasm. And of course, you'd usually be right.

But seriously, I love my job.

What I do isn't glamorous, and it doesn't even make use of most of my gifts, talents and abilities. I do a lot of grunt work -- data entry, mailings, some very tedious projects. It's kind of my "tent-making" job, to be honest, just something that will pay my bills while I'm pursuing the other things I love to do. But sometimes, in the course of completing my daily tasks, I will have contact with a client or potential client, a mom or dad of a seriously ill child.

Today I talked to a woman -- a single woman! -- in Indiana who has fostered more than 230 of what we would call "special needs" children, most of whom were abused. Among the eleven kids (ages 8 to 21) who are currently living with her full-time, there are 53 disabilities, ranging from Autism to traumatic brain injury to mild mental retardation to anxiety disorders to seizure disorders to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (as a result of sexual abuse).

She spent the first nine years of her life physically disabled, and has undergone seven surgeries (one of them recently) for life-threatening conditions. You'd think that being single would be enough. You'd think that having serious health problems herself would be enough. You'd think that fostering 230 children over her lifetime would be enough. Apparently not.

She has adopted these eleven children, and home schools all of them. Two of them just graduated from high school and are going to college in the fall.

She apologized for not having a pen handy when I called to give her the phone number for her local chapter of our organization...she's at a Salvation Army summer camp this week with all her kids (apparently being a mom to eleven kids at home isn't even enough!). She told me my phone call was timely, because she was just in the middle of telling people how good God is and how He always provides.

Her voice bled physical exhaustion but spiritual joy. I heard her smile. "I'm grateful to be alive and doing the work of the Lord," she said.