Gratitude 3

I am thankful for having a job.  I have worked longer in this position than in anything else in my life: well over twelve years.  It doesn't pay a lot, just more than minimum wage.  My subsidized rent makes it possible for me to live in Vancouver.  I have remained in this low-paying job for a couple of reasons:

1. My lack of university qualifications makes it impossible for me to secure anything that pays a decent income.
2. At the age of sixty-one (in less than four weeks) I will be four years from retirement.  At my age it is very difficult to find new employment.
3. Last, but not least, I love what I do.

Employment has always been a problem for me.  It has always been difficult to find good-paying employment that is interesting, socially redemptive, and that I am able to do well.  I now have a poor paying job in mental health peer support work that is interesting, socially redemptive and that I am able to do well.  If I were paying market rent I would have to be earning the equivalent of a certified mental health worker with full credentials, or approximately double my income.

Regardless of what I think of upper management where I work, they really don't touch me at all, despite the sometimes toxic effects from some of their policy changes.  I have a lot of freedom and flexibility and for the most part I can make my own hours.  If a client cancels an appointment within twenty-four hours I still get paid for it.  Sometimes I can enjoy a week full of long pleasant walks and sessions spent drawing in coffee shops, all paid for, because of these strategic paid cancellations.

Besides this the work itself is very gratifying.  I am able to live out my Christian faith in my work because I get to walk with people as they are trying to move towards recovery from mental illness, or at least to stabilize their life situation.  I have never been involved in such humanizing work. 

All my other years spent in home support and working with the homeless and other marginalized people has prepared and trained me for this position.  Each client is different, unique, and so is my approach to each client.  This is one of the most relational types of work one could ever hope to do.  Walking together, we also facilitate each other.  I always learn and gain something from my clients.  They are the ones in charge of their recovery.  I have simply been invited to come along for the ride.

My job has taught me to be a better friend, and I think in many ways, a better person.  Respect is such an essential element in my profession that this has carried over to my friendships.  I don't talk rudely anymore to those who are closest to me.  I am careful not to vent on them and not to pull any drama.  It isn't that I'm afraid of losing their friendship.  I respect them too much.  This is what my clients have taught me.

I met with one of my supervisors today and she reported to me that our clients really enjoy working with me.  This suggests to me how much this work has changed me.  I did understand, upon taking this job, that I was going to have to make certain sacrifices in order to do it well.  I would have to go out less, rest more, and take better care of my mental and bodily health.  I wouldn't be as socially available, but I managed to hone my visits with friends in such a way that our less frequent visits, for their scarcity, have become all the more precious to me.  I rarely see people oftener than once a week, occasionally biweekly, usually every month or so.

In my work as a peer support worker I have learned to respect how fragile we all are, but also to appreciate our strength as with our scant resources we try to forge lives of meaning, purpose and quality.  The experience of God's healing and redemptive love has become the very essence of what I do, and if I do my work well, and if I can be a good and worthy friend it is to God that I give the credit, even as I learn to see the face of Christ in every person I meet, among my friends, my clients, strangers on the street.