Grace's Story - When Callings are Hard

When I was 5, I wanted to be a vet. When I was 12, I decided I wanted to be a missionary. Then I was 15, and I wanted to be a writer. Then I turned 18 and university was right around the corner, and I had no clue what I really wanted to do. Maybe I could be a missionary who wrote books and had pets? I decided to go to Redeemer University College because my older sister had gone there and loved the dorm experience, and it seemed like a good school. So off I went to get my Bachelor of Arts degree, excited for a change and a new stage of life.

Like most other students, my first year at Redeemer was filled with mostly core courses such as History, Biology, and English – yuck. I can’t say I enjoyed many of the required courses, or even the electives I chose. I was major-less and minor-less. Before Redeemer, I’d never heard of the field of Social Work. I decided to take Introduction to Social Work as an elective my second semester because it sounded like something I’d be interested in – I had a passion for helping and caring for people. What a positively dull course it was, learning about historical figures in social work, the history of social policy, and social work theory. I hated it, and I made up my mind that I was not going to take any more of those courses. One day towards the end of the semester, however, we had a guest speaker from the Children’s Aid Society (CAS). She talked about what her job involved, and it really piqued my interest. She told us a story about how either she or a co-worker (my brain is a little fuzzy about the details) had had a gun pointed at them by a client on the job once. And I thought, wow, that sounds exciting! I know you’re thinking I’m nuts right now, but stay with me. After class that day, I decided that not only was I going to major in social work, I was going to work in child welfare some day.

Fast forward two years. I had a double major in Social Work/Sociology and Psychology, and had taken a whole bunch of Social Work courses by that time. Each course I took except Social Research Methods, and of course Statistics – gag! – confirmed that Social Work was the field for me. I discovered that there were many more employment options than child welfare, but that’s the one that kind of stuck around in the back of my mind. In my third year, I took an elective called Child Welfare, and this course is what absolutely confirmed my calling. After almost every weekly three-hour night class, I would excitedly call my mom and tell her how I knew that this was what I wanted to do with my life, how God had 100% put it on my heart to become a child protection worker. I completed a practicum at the Children’s Aid Society of Brant in the resource department and shadowed different types of workers, and I loved it.

Now I knew my calling… what was the next step? Here came the barriers. I learned that I could not to do my dream job with the degree I was about to earn; I needed further education. Redeemer was not accredited and therefore could not give me a Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) degree. Child welfare these days requires a BSW or a Master of Social Work degree (MSW). My parents were loaning me money to be able to complete my BA, and they’d made it clear that they would not be able to help past my fourth year, so I didn’t have the money to continue in school. My dreams were dashed and I thought I would be stuck doing something I would not be happy doing. One of my professors with whom I had a really good relationship kept encouraging me to get my MSW right after I graduated from Redeemer and when I told her that I couldn’t afford it, she encouraged me to apply for scholarships. I was skeptical and had no intention of doing this when she first mentioned it to me; I didn’t think I was “smart” enough to get a scholarship and it seemed like too much work with little chance of a reward. However, I attended an information session about applications and decided to just try. My first semester of my fourth year at Redeemer is the busiest I had ever been before (now I have two kids and work full-time; what did I know back then?!). While studying with a full course load and working part-time, I applied for two large scholarships (one worth $10,000, the other was valued at $17,500) and three graduate schools, each application requiring a whole bunch of essay responses to questions, reference letters, a transcription, a resumé, and more.. I still don’t know how I got through that semester in one piece; I just know that I was very stressed and I didn’t sleep a lot. I got accepted into all three graduate schools I applied for; however, I still did not have the funds to attend any of them. I accepted my offer at Wilfrid Laurier University despite not having the money to go, and prayed that God would provide a way.

After I graduated from Redeemer in June 2010, I worked four different jobs during the summer (after worrying about not being able to get even one), trying to save as much as possible and gain social work related experience, and I applied for OSAP. I didn’t think it would be enough but I just kept going. Then, in August, I got a phone call. I was so confused. The woman who had called asked me if I was planning on accepting the SSHRC scholarship I’d been offered a couple of months ago. But I didn’t recall being offered a scholarship; I never got any mail about it. “Which one is SSHRC again?”, I asked her. She told me that the value of the scholarship was $17,500. Seventeen thousand five hundred dollars. I immediately told her that I would be accepting it and that I planned to go to Wilfrid Laurier. She told me she would send me an e-mail and I needed to sign a paper and send it back to her to confirm that I would be accepting it. I hung up the phone, my jaw still on the floor. God had provided. That money, combined with what I would get from OSAP, was more than enough to afford tuition and the cost of living for at least my first year. There God was again – confirming my calling, providing a way for me to get the degree I needed in order to do I was supposed to do. I remember listening to the music in my car full blast and belting out the song that was on the radio on my way to work that day; I was so overjoyed and grateful. Looking back, I shouldn’t have been so surprised that God had answered my prayer and taken care of me; it’s what He does.

Before I even graduated from Laurier with my MSW, I was offered a job as a child protection worker at Family and Children’s Services of the Waterloo Region. I worked part-time while completing my degree, and stayed there for almost a year on contracts. I was then offered a one-year contract at Family and Children’s Services of Guelph and Wellington. Before that contract was up, just when I was getting nervous about not having a guaranteed job, I was offered a permanent position at Family and Children’s Services of the Niagara Region, which is where I continue to work. I got to come back to the area where I grew up and live close to my parents and most of my siblings.

The first few years I worked after getting my MSW were really, really rough. I had no idea what I was doing and there was no real training; I was just thrown in and learned only by doing the job and asking questions. I made tons of mistakes, some that put children at risk. I had lots of anxiety and lots of days where I dreaded my home visits and meetings because I didn’t feel qualified to be doing the work. The burnout and turnover rates in child welfare are incredibly high; it is an emotionally draining, fast-paced, deadline-driven job with potentially deadly consequences if you make a wrong decision. But God gave me wonderful and supportive supervisors and co-workers, and He continued to build my confidence and skills.

Most days, there is at least one thing I love about doing my job. I get to help people, facilitate change, build meaningful relationships with people who are struggling, and I have flexibility within my schedule. I get to be kind and help people navigate a very challenging and intimidating system. I find joy in being able to provide for my family and I get to be proud of the fact that I can continue to do such a difficult job.

Some days, my job sucks. I’ve been called every name in the book and am often seen as “the bad guy”, although thankfully, I’ve never had a gun pointed at me. I’m limited in the amount of overtime I am allowed to do, yet am required to do more work than is humanly possible in a 37 hour work week. I have to work with some really challenging individuals; I have to make hard decisions that permanently impact people’s lives; I see heart-breaking abuse and neglect; the paperwork is tedious and never-ending; I have impossible deadlines; I am exhausted and overwhelmed at times. It’s very difficult to perfect the work/life balance, to take care of myself but also do my job with integrity and to the best of my ability. It’s a constant struggle to maintain good mental health, and I don’t always get to see my kids before they go to bed.

When the days come where I just don’t want to be at work and I don’t think I can handle doing the job anymore, when I consider doing some menial job where I don’t have to use my brain and I know my day is done at 4:30pm and I wouldn’t take work home with me in my head, I have to remind myself that I am doing what God has called me to do and it’s not an option to just not use my gifts because my job is hard. There is no doubt in my mind that I am living out my calling.

As I continue to grow in my spiritual walk, I’m learning to pray more as I do my work. I pray for my clients, for the ability to prioritize and be productive, and to not be paralyzed by anxiety about the sheer volume of items on my to-do list, let alone the difficulty of some of those tasks. I pray regularly for competence and patience and the ability to treat my clients with compassion and empathy.

No matter what God has called you to do, He will equip you. He follows through in providing you with what you need to keep going, even when it seems impossible. “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil 1:6). I hope you are as encouraged by this as I have been over the years.