LET HIM BE BURDENED! | KAIROS GLOBAL | JULY 2022

Author: Betcy Jose

Intro: Software Engineer Betcy Jose writes about how she manages work and family.

If you love me you will keep my commandments. I shall ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete to be with you forever (John 14:15-16).

First and foremost, I need help. I am not a supermum managing home, kids and work single-handedly with efficiency and ease. I am a struggling mom, wife, daughter and a professional, whose daily burden is not so easy to carry. But here I am, living each day, carrying out my responsibilities, and at the end of it, am I truly happy? The answer is a big YES!

I love this life, even though it is hard! When I chose marriage as my vocation, I never expected life to be this tightly packed. But living it every day, being loved so intensely by my children and husband, enjoying the bond of family, the sense of purpose, having something to do – it all makes this life so meaningful and worthwhile.

In the beginning, it was hard to realise that as a wife, and a working professional, my ‘me time’ was limited. The transition from bachelorette to a married woman, took time to happen. I had to move to a different location and had to switch companies. The people around me were all new. New job and team, new place and people; it was like moving out of my world and into the world of my husband. And it took time for me to reconcile with this new daily routine and to move to ‘our world’ from ‘my world’. Then, after a time of prayerful waiting, we were blessed with a beautiful boy, and then again with another one. And I had a new role – a mother. No transitions are easy for me. It took time to play the roles in an ‘okay mode’. And playing these roles together daily, was not an easy task. 

I am a very practical person and I try to reason out my abilities and responsibilities to figure out what can be done practically about it. The key-hacks I have for managing everything are ‘Setting priorities and ‘Compartmentalising’. I accept that I cannot do everything perfectly, I try to do the things that I should do and minimise the time I waste. What I have is 24 hours to do the tasks that I must. So, it is all about allocating time judiciously by being just with my responsibilities. If multitasking is possible, I try to do it according to the nature of work at hand. But when with kids, I try to make the most out of it. Thus prioritising tasks at hand and compartmentalising ‘mind and time’ (concentrating on one thing at a time), help in doing these tasks effectively. 

At one point, we struggled to manage work and kids in the ‘work from home’ mode. We literally fought for time – work had an allotted timetable, and I kept tabs on the ‘minutes’ I lost from the allotted time. What happened was that work piled up and anger filled my mind. Clearly, I couldn’t manage but by God’s grace, I was able to realise that it is not about doing things, but doing things from the heart peacefully that matters. And I started to do things wholeheartedly, focusing on one thing at a time, without complaints or grudges, accepting the limitations of a human being. This only have I found: God created mankind upright, but they have gone in search of many schemes (Ecclesiastes 7:29).

Looking back, I realise, God can turn everything to good. Switching companies gave me this opportunity to become a developer from my earlier role of support engineer. I love the work I do now. It is an amazing feeling to see my code working. Seriously, the joy of a creator! There are moments when I wonder if I can still be a ‘good mother’ with all these hours dedicated for work, and I am not sure. Could I be a better mother without working? I do not know. One thing I know is that I love my profession, the work I do and that no other responsibility is more important to me than my family.

Accepting that I cannot manage everything perfectly and trying to do the best possible in all my roles, by surrendering to God, I have seen things fall in place miraculously. Even the timing of office calls for my husband and myself, the daily status updates and resolving bugs take unexpected turns, kids sleeping uninterruptedly and eating quickly, such umpteen small miracles happen daily. And that is how it gets managed. Accepting and praying for God’s will to happen, taking decisions with him, surrendering confusions to the Father, asking the Holy Spirit for guidance, taking a pause for prayer to make sure I am still with him, and not busy with ‘my’ life. When God is in control, things get arranged beautifully and when I take it out from him and try to manage, I see things falling apart. So now I know – okay, let Him be burdened, not me!

Betcy Jose works as a software engineer with Infosys. She lives with her husband Amal Jose and their two sons in Bharananganam, India.