The Cleaning Lady - Part 1 of a 2-Part Series for Labor Day

I stumbled into it. A friend’s mother needed someone to clean her house weekly and I was willing if I could bring my two children along. A third child was on the way, but we’d figure that out later. As long as I worked while Big Bird and Mr. Dressup entertained my kids, it was a great arrangement and a little extra income. But when the lady of the house came home one day to see how huge I’d grown and observed me lumbering around her house, she insisted it was time for mat leave.

A few months after the baby came, I returned with all three kids in tow and somehow, we made it work. By the time the older two went off to school, word of mouth had worked its magic. I began taking on more cleaning jobs and by the time the youngest started school, it was my career. I cleaned up to eight houses a week plus a couple of offices on the weekends. It allowed me to finish my workday in time to pick up our kids from school and stay home with them during school breaks, and for that I felt grateful. I spent the next ten years scrubbing floors and bathrooms. I once calculated that I cleaned 600 toilets a year, counting our own.

My vacuum tracks never looked this perfect.

Many clients came and went from my roster during those years, but I found they tended to fall into one of two camps: housekeeping-challenged families who expressed deep gratitude for anything I could do to lessen their chaos; and working empty-nesters with more money than time. I knew this because sometimes when I arrived, I could still see my vacuum tracks from two weeks before in an unused room!

The best part of this job was imagining my clients coming home from work to a clean house after a tiring work day. The worst part was returning home exhausted to my own dirty one. My body began wearing out.

Though I gave myself pep talks about doing honorable work with nothing to feel ashamed of, I feared cleaning was all I would ever be able to do. While I’d been sweeping and dusting, the world around me had become not only computer-literate but computer-dependent. I prayed about it a lot. Even though I did not regret this choice because it allowed me to be there for my kids, I felt trapped. 

One day while en route from my morning client’s house to my afternoon client’s, I stopped for a red light at Saskatchewan Avenue and Royal Road. I was devouring a sandwich in my car, already tired and feeling ugly and sweaty in my worn jeans and tee-shirt. And perhaps a bit lonely. As I waited for the light to turn green, four nicely dressed women emerged from City Hall and crossed the street together—city staff going out for lunch, I imagined. I watched them with a little envy.

I think I’d like to work there some day, and NOT as the janitor. The thought came even though I felt certain it would never come to pass. The office world where I’d once fit now felt out of reach and I had neither time nor money to go back to school. God would have to surprise me if he was going to pull me out of my cleaning lady attire and, more importantly, my cleaning lady mindset. 

I’ll tell you that story next week. 

(Meanwhile…if you’re blessed to have a good cleaning person, please treat them with kindness, dignity, and generosity!)

Jobs that Taught Me about Life: The Finale

It’s Labour Day and time to be wrapping up my series on jobs. I could write about my ten years at Portage Alliance Church that followed the college job, where I went from being the senior pastor's administrative assistant to a communications coordinator, to the director of creative arts. How I led the drama team and put together newsletters and PowerPoint shows and Sunday programs and schedules for the music and tech teams. How I wrote drama scripts and articles and produced Christmas banquets. How I got burned out.

Or I could write about how I traded all that for a part-time job at City Hall where I could simply do my job and go home. No evening meetings or Sunday mornings or putting in extra time. No people to lead. Knowing everything I did would be double-checked by a superior, so I could relax. How I studied through the required courses to obtain a Certificate in Manitoba Municipal Administration and got to attend a graduation ceremony for the first time since high school. How I would learn to conduct municipal elections and prepare agendas and minutes for city council meetings and so much more. How I would get to write speeches for the mayor sometimes. How hard it is to believe I’ve already been there over seven years.

Or I could tell about how the city hall job freed up time to pursue writing. How by the second year I would see two of the plays and several of the short sketches we’d done at church published, as well as some Chicken Soup for the Soul stories. How I’d ask for and get a weekly newspaper column. How I’d keep working on my novel, take writing courses, attend conferences, and make it to the finals in a contest that would attract the attention of an agent who would eventually sell my book and I’d see it published in 2016. How I’d sign a contract on my second novel just five months later.

Each of those paragraphs could easily be a story for another day. Each could tell of the lessons God taught me, the way he has been there leading and guiding even when I couldn’t feel his presence or see his hand. Even when health issues brought me to my knees in tears and defeat and I couldn’t understand how or why he heals some and not others. Even when I failed miserably to hear his voice.

Last week I was privileged to attend the American Christian Fiction Writers conference in Nashville where I learned from Allen Arnold about how we can choose to exist in one of two realms: the Orphan realm or the Freedom realm. When we exist in the orphan realm, we believe life is up to us. If anything good is going to happen, it’s because we work and strive to make it happen. It’s a place of fear, of hoarding, of control, of never having enough because we don’t know we have a loving Father who wants to invite us into something better.

The Freedom Realm is a land of “with.” In it, our Father invites us to do the things we love with him. It’s a place of fierce dependence on God, of peace and joy, of knowing that control is an illusion. It’s a place where “pro and con” lists are a toxic way to make decisions because they depend on my knowledge of the future. It’s a place of knowing I am a beloved daughter of God and I can enter into a new adventure with him every morning, every moment, and not need to have all the answers.

It’s where I want to live.

We closed the session with a look at a popular video, Derek Redmond’s famous run in the 1992 Olympics where a torn hamstring stopped him on the track but where he got back up and hobbled to the finish line. You’ve probably seen it. It’s a powerfully moving clip all by itself. The world has held it up as a story of courage and never giving up. 

But it’s so much more. As I watched it again, I saw myself as that runner. The injury became my most recent wound, the loss of my newspaper column which was still stinging my heart. My Father comes down out of the stands to be with me. He fiercely defends me against those who would remove me from the race. And he supports me to the finish line.

Naturally, I was a complete and blubbering wreck. But it got worse.

The next morning during our worship time as we sang “Good, good Father,” God asked me something. “What if it’s about more than the lost column? What if that torn muscle represents your deepest wound, the thing that trips you up and speaks lies to your heart no matter how earnestly and frequently you’ve forgiven the perpetrator?” As I attached those hurts to the Olympics scenario, the fierce protection of my heavenly father’s love became more powerful still.

And I knew that’s where I wanted to live. Every moment.

Watch the video again. You’re the runner, hurling yourself down that track with all you’ve got to give. You’re in the lead, you’re set to win. Then life throws pain at you. You know what it is. That thing that happened when you were little. That thing that happened last week. Either way, you had no control over it. It hurt. And it still hurts. You believe it’s taken you out of the running. You get up and try to hobble along on your own.

But your Father comes. He defends. He supports. He comforts. He loves. He finishes the race with you. You are not alone. You do not have to live in the orphan realm. 

Derek Redmond says, in spite of the millions of people who have been encouraged by his story, he would still prefer to have won the gold medal in Barcelona that day. But God knows that the areas where we are scarred and wounded are a gateway to our greatest strength. 

Let him lead you there.

(To order Allen Arnold's book, The Story of WITH, click HERE.)

Jobs That Taught Me About Life, Part 5: McDonalds

It was 1978. I sat in the darkened basement of the McDonalds Restaurant on Marshall Avenue in Longview, Texas, watching the training film flicker on the collapsible screen. I learned the history of the company, how to smile and take orders and—gulp—upsell by suggesting an order of fries and a drink to folks who ordered only a burger.

Working in a fast food joint seemed like a good solution for a starving student’s wife until I learned we had to pay full price for anything we ate. I began packing my own bologna sandwiches and learned to work with a rumbling tummy. “Free Meal” cards were sparingly handed out for special rewards. Just once, I earned one for having the perfect amount of change in my drawer at the end of my nine-and-a-half hour shift.

One day we received a call that a bus-load of football players was on its way. The crew in the back scrambled to assemble dozens of Big Macs and fill the fry bin, while out front we began pre-filling large cups of soda to the brim. When the burgers remained in the bin after their expiry time passed and we still hadn’t seen the bus, I thought my heart might break as we filled garbage bags with the unsold food, counting every Styrofoam box and recording it on the waste form. We learned later that the bus had shown up at the McDonalds across town—which had not received a call and was not prepared.

Me in my polyester uniform.

The polyester uniform seemed like a good solution for a starving student’s wife, too, until I learned I’d need to buy my own navy or black shoes. I stopped at a department store and bought the cheapest pair I could find. They were comfy, but made of nylon that allowed no breathing room. By the end of my first week, the shoes stunk so bad I left them out overnight to fend off burglars. And since my weekly trips to the laundromat were not frequent enough to keep the uniform fresh, I learned to swish it around in the bathtub each night and hang it up to dry.

I was to punch my time card and be at the counter, smiling and ready to take orders before 6:30 each morning. I learned to keep the coffee pots going continually and fill any momentary lull with counter-wiping and cup dispenser restocking. No standing idle, no drinking water in sight of the customers, no chit chat. And never, ever stop smiling.

I got two fifteen-minute breaks for which I needed to punch in and out, neither of them over the noon rush of course. By the end of the first day, I thought I’d die. I complained of sore feet to my parents over the phone. After a month, Dad asked me if I’d grown used to being on my feet.

“Well, put it this way,” I said. “I’m used to sore feet.”

The neatest learning experience coming out of that job came from the mostly African American staff. It was an education to be a minority for the first time in my life, to discover that the others could easily communicate without my knowing what was going on if they wanted to, and that they possessed a sense of humour I could only hope to emulate. I was the dumb white Canadian to be taken under wing, and I could not take myself too seriously if I wanted to get along.

I earned $3.10 an hour. When evaluation time came, Management gave us grades for our work. An ‘A’ grade meant a ten-cent raise. ‘B’ meant room for improvement while you continued at your same pay rate. ‘C’ meant a cut in pay (yes, they could actually do that) and ‘D’ meant you were fired.

Confident I’d soon be taking home an extra 95 cents a day, I went to my appointment smiling. But left in tears.

My manager had given me a ‘B’ and told me I needed to do more upselling. I’d been on the job nine months, and this news was all the incentive I needed. I spent my days off applying for secretarial positions until I was hired by a guy who sold swimming pools.

But that’s a story for another day.

Jobs that Taught Me About Life, Part 2: The Secretary

A few days after high school graduation and with my hands filled with sparkling resumes I’d worked out on my Selectric typewriter, Portage la Prairie was my oyster. I left copies at the brand new Provincial Building (no idea which department I might like to work in, but back then they had a central reception desk at the main doors), the Portage Mutual, and the Portage Co-op. 

The next day, I received three job offers by phone and figured that was just how the world worked. The reality check would come later.

Monday morning, I showed up at the Co-op by 8:00 a.m. where I would work in their offices for the next seven months. Having learned shorthand in high school made me a bit of a novelty, and the personnel manager who hired me was eager to play the role of dictator. Turns out, dictating a letter was harder than he imagined. After fumbling around to come up with his first sentence, he sat back, took a drag of his cigarette, and said, “read that back to me.”

It also turned out that taking dictation in a real office situation was more challenging than taking it in Mrs. Wangsness’ shorthand class, where she stood at the front of the room, stop watch in one hand to evenly time her speaking as she read from carefully prepared text. Even her “no, scratch that’s” were scripted.

We stumbled through one letter, I typed it up, and I never took dictation again. But I do recall typing a lot, sorting piles of invoices into alphabetical order, operating the switchboard, and breathing my chain-smoking co-worker’s second-hand offerings.

It was an interesting time in the life of our Co-op. The old store was being torn down and a brand new one built (which has since been demolished. Yes, I’m that old.) By fall, we had moved our offices into two temporary mobile homes at the rear of the building. I shared the kitchen/living room space of one trailer, while the bedrooms became managers’ offices and the copying room. The second trailer included a makeshift customer counter where more staff worked, and the two trailers were joined to each other and to the main building by plywood hallways that grew increasingly colder as winter set in. Not the most pleasant of working environments, but everyone looked forward to moving in to our new space.

One November weekend, a massive snowstorm left Portage buried up to its nose. When I returned to work Monday morning, I learned one of our trailers had collapsed under the weight of the snow. The roof had come down right on my desk, destroying my typewriter and cracking my desk in half. Had I been sitting at it, I’d have been a goner.

We heard later that the trailer had been made in California and should never have crossed the Canadian border. It was not designed to hold that much snow. 

I remember little about what followed because I left shortly thereafter to start my new life in Texas—far from the ice and snow. But I gained work experience that would prove valuable in the years ahead and the memory of that smashed typewriter assured me God was not done with me on this planet yet. I suppose there’s some irony in the fact that I would later live in a mobile home for 26 years.

When our Co-op demolished the old store and opened its current building in 2008, I felt both sad and bewildered as to why they’d destroy such a “new” building. Maybe that’s why I now work at City Hall, built in 1898 and still standing strong. 

But that’s a story for another day.