At the beginning of October, our helper announced that she
and her three kids were going to be reunited with her husband in a different
city on the other side of the province. I was so excited for her! It had been
three years since they had last seen him. Now these babies were going to get be
with their daddy. It’s a beautiful thing. She brought a friend to replace her
as our helper. That friend’s older brother had a stroke and she needed to help
at her home. Yes, family first. I told her. Another friend brought over a
perspective house helper, who really seemed like she would be perfect. She went
straight to Kate, who happily sat in her lap. However, this woman’s husband didn’t
want her working outside of the home. So here we are. Tomorrow will be November
and we haven’t had a helper for almost a month. We’re making it, but again this
is not the topic of this post.
Before we went back to America to officially meet Baby Kate
face to face, we had a wonderful, hard working, faithful helper named Ibu
Misty. She was a Muslim woman who grew up in Java and moved to Papua with her
husband, who is a taxi driver and helps in a local mechanic shop. A few months before we left, Misty was bit by
the neighbor’s dog and took a long time to recover. Two weeks before we left
for America, she suggested she take some time off to rest and recover. When we
returned to Papua in March, Misty was in Java. When I got word that she had
returned, I also got word that she started working for another family from
Java.
I was really starting to wonder about this house helper
situation. Is it me? Am I asking too much? Am I paying too little? Should I
talk more? Should I just get out of the way and let them work? It was easy to
take other’s personal situations and make them about me- Did that really happen
or do they just not want to work here? Left unchecked these thoughts can lead
one into a dark, sad place. In the middle of this internal fight with myself,
two previous helpers randomly called to see if they could come by and visit.
One sweet lady worked for us while we were temporarily
staying in a colleague’s house. She stopped by on Saturday morning, and hot on
her trail was Ibu Misty and her family. That was the first time I had seen
Misty since our return, and it was her first time to meet Kate. Kate lit up
when she saw and heard Ibu Misty’s voice. She smiled and walked all around the
room laughing. I told Misty that Kate remembered her voice from when I was
pregnant with her, and we all laughed. It was so nice to visit with these two
women, both of whom I consider to be friends. Tears came to my eyes with the
joy that was being stored up in my heart. These two visits, although short,
were reminders that it’s not me. It was medicine that reached those dark, sad
places and pulled back the curtains and shed some light in there. It was
soooooooooo good to hug Misty’s neck, to see how big her grandson was getting,
and to visit with her sweet daughters.
We miss her.
No comments:
Post a Comment