Loving God. Loving People.

A day in the life of Tanya Srokosz…

Monday morning again…how does the weekend fly by so quickly?! 6.30 start, out of bed quickly, have a shower, get my breakfast and sit down to do my Bible study – excellent passage in Hebrews this morning. Text a verse round to a few people to encourage them and jump in the car to head to work.

Morning driving time is a chance for me to chat to God about my day and ask him to be part of it, to pray for people I care about and for situations that are taking time in my head.

8.00 – arrive at work, chat to the others on the early shift, put on the kettle and take the drinks order. What do I do? I am a Family Support Worker at a SureStart centre and the first face I see most mornings is Debbie Ricketts (see earlier blog) who is my boss. I love working with Debbie as we can encourage each other and pray together if we are struggling with situations during our working day.

Anyway, I’ve got my cup of tea, had a chat and spend the next hour or so catching up on emails and papaerwork and preparing for the visits I have that day.

Team meeting comes around at 9.40am, a great chance to see everyone and hear what is going on in the Children Centres, to share ideas and concerns.

12.00 – head out on a home visit to one of the families I am supporting to see how they are getting on and provide them with some parenting support and advice. What a privilege to have a job that allows you to invest in people’s families in the hope that they can reach their potential and access the support they need to cope with the many and varying pressures in their lives.

12.40 – back to the office, paperwork to do and definitely some lunch, my stomach is starting to rumble!

1-2.30 – New Birth Visits with a colleague, very enjoyable. We go out and visit families with new babies to tell them about the Children’s Centre and the support we can offer them, to advise them of all the services available to them, and also to see how they are settling into having a new baby.

Back to the office in time for Debbie’s tea round and spend the rest of the afternoon completing the paperwork from my visits, phoning other professionals involved with the families I work with and responding to emails. If I get a chance I will do some planning for a Stay and Play group I run later in the week.

All in all a good day. Drive home – this is a brilliant time for me to put on my Bluetooth headset and have a 30 minute uninterrupted chat with one of my family or friends, love it! Time to head round a friends for a cuppa after work and then out for dinner with some other friends before hitting my bed at about 11.30pm…lovely.

day in the life of Jackie Medler

My life’s a mess……..now before you start thinking we should pray for the Medlers ………..or perhaps they need counselling I should explain what I mean….. for the last three weeks or more we have been having some extensive work done on our home that we moved into last September. Floors up, old plaster removed, central heating pipes re-directed, new electrics, fire and fire surround removed…. and today that’s about where we’ve got to except that even in the “good” rooms upstairs we’ve now had carpets and floor boards up!

It’s pretty typical that on my “day off” I get to do a 101 things and today has been no exception – had to get up earlier than I would have liked as workmen came at 7.45am and it was non-stop from then on…

…Life is hectic but at the end of the day there’s still time to ponder how good God is ….and be thankful that I had a chance to talk about the work I’m involved with at The Bridge to the carpet fitters – although looking back have no idea how we got onto the subject!

As we’ve been doing this work at home we’ve revealed much about our house that would have otherwise been a mystery. Looking beneath the floor boards of our lounge revealed a very real danger – we could have caught fire! It would have been all too easy to have carried on re-decorating and having a new floor and been blissfully unaware of the danger beneath our feet. The electrics that were added to the previous extension were, to say the least, unsafe.

The work we are doing has become more extensive, caused more disruption (we now have no power to our one existing useable downstairs room) and been more costly but without it …..all that we are doing could have been for nothing.

This has been a really practical lesson as well and I’m appreciating why Jesus told stories and used everyday experiences to teach valuable lessons. My circumstances at home have illustrated to me the importance of what we aim to do at The Bridge, where I work. We help people look at the real situations in their lives as they approach recovery and part of that is exposing the hidden issues that perhaps they haven’t faced before. If we, and they, fail to do this then it is literally like papering over the cracks in their lives and so recovery (or rescue) like this often becomes a deeper and more extensive process than first thought. I need to remember as well that for those I work with the process may also be more painful and more costly than they first thought and I need to have patience and real love for them in order to reflect God’s love to them as that they get to have the opportunity of real recovery and hope for the future!