It's been a long, tiring week for me, physically and mentally.
It has been tiring physically, as we've had a variety of illnesses spreading through the family. Only two of the six of us caught the stomach flu, a huge blessing from God and a tribute, I believe, to frequent vigorous hand-washing. Unfortunately, Little Boy managed to find a cold virus somewhere, and since he is so well-loved, I expect this one to spread faster and further. He loves to play with people's faces with hands that spend much of the day in his mouth! I am fighting off cold symptoms with zinc today. Little Boy also struggled with one of the worst cases of constipation I've seen since Elli was a baby. That resulted in a very bad night of sleep early in the week. Last night was another rough night since he had a cold, Elli woke up for no reason, and I had to get out the door for a very-early-morning meeting at the hospital.
Mentally, I've been working through, praying through, talking through a situation with my supervisor at work. People who know me know that I'm a gal who speaks up when something isn't right. I am very uncomfortable with one-on-one confrontation, but I also am unable to stand idly by and watch wrong. Speaking up and calling a supervisor to account is a very tricky thing, especially for someone who sincerely wishes to honor God in everything I do.
My job-share partner and I are in a unique position: we are not bread-winners, and because of that, we don't need our jobs. We decided that we'd rather risk discipline or termination than stay silent, lose the ability to do our jobs, and watch our entire department go under. I took a big step 3 weeks ago to get someone outside our department (above it, actually) involved. This was a big risk and has created quite a bit of totally-understandable tension. The result was that we were able to schedule a face-to-face meeting with my job-share partner, my supervisor, and her new boss. I prayed most of the day prior to the meeting, and even during the meeting, that God would keep my speech honest, timely, beneficial, and kind.
We did our best to communicate our concerns without attacking our supervisor personally or "tattling" on her. I worked very hard through the meeting to focus on constructive solutions. We had to talk about what was going wrong, but I really tried to keep everyone thinking about how we can fix things and make a bad situation better.
I think that I still have some goodwill with my supervisor, because of this focus on how to make things work. While the meeting was difficult, we did walk away with some things to try and I immediately put those into action. I know she sees that and respects that. We will meet again next week to work some more on ways to improve. So we remain amicable and able to work together.
All day today, I've been praying about something else. I believe that part of my job is to do everything I can to make my department and my supervisor look good and to succeed. I believe that is a crucial part of submitting to my earthly authorities. I've had this sense that part of this might include meeting with my supervisor privately to share some suggestions for how she can improve, based on what I've heard and seen in the department. She has created so much animosity by her own actions. I'm praying about whether it might be part of my responsibility to help her succeed by carefully sharing how she has come across so that she has the opportunity to make some changes. I don't know -- it's something I'm praying about.
