“I Quit!”

I’m miserable. My job as a social worker in a community clinic has become untenable — I have a caseload of 200 families and I work only 20 hours a week. Some of my clients only need me to sign off on a few forms once a year, but many others need extensive assistance in multiple areas. I spend my days putting out fires, some of them raging, and feel like I’m never doing enough. I can’t do this anymore.

I gloomily review my options for the millionth time. I don’t want to commute — with three small children, and a fourth on the way, it’s important that I be near home. But there are precisely two local institutions that hire social workers: a school for children with special needs that isn’t a good fit for me, and the clinic I’m already employed in.

I want to daven, but feel ridiculous. What am I asking Hashem for? That the perfect job suddenly materialize a few blocks from my home? Wouldn’t that be tantamount to asking for a miracle? Dawn is stealing across the night sky, but my heart is heavy as I finally drag myself back to bed.

Three months later, I’m on maternity leave, enjoying our prince. The shalom zachar and bris are behind us, Baby and I have figured out a rhythm, and I even have occasional pockets of time when the older ones are out and baby is napping. I dig up the writing correspondence course I’d started years before.