Mom's Sitter Cancels, Left No Choice. Takes Kid to Biggest Work Day of Her Life

By Jason Derr January 18, 2018 at 8:21am

I don’t know a parent who has not faced this issue. It is a work day and you have meetings or appointments and, at the last moment, your babysitter quits on you.

For us, it was weeks after my father died and my wife and I were working three jobs to get by and handing over a check and a bit to our babysitter. It was long days for all of us with my wife and I leaving the house at 6 a.m. and my wife back at 2:00 p.m. before leaving for her second job. I got home at 3:30 p.m.

Two weeks into us working three jobs, he said he couldn’t help us and came in with a list of all the ways we were terrible parents. It had been a rough two weeks as we transitioned to an intense schedule and things like housekeeping had fallen to the side.

Tammi Haveman knows that struggle. On the day of a meeting she calls ‘hard won and harder to schedule’ her babysitter canceled on her.

Finding reliable childcare is hard enough when you are a business professional. Imagine how hard it is if you are working minimum wage with no family supports. Do you earn minimum wage and then pay your sitter minimum wage?

The average cost of child care in America is $11,666 a year, or $972 a month. This is out of reach for most Americans.

Being a modern working woman, she packed her bag, the kid, and an iPad and headed to the office. By her report, he was an angel, totally absorbed into his video game.

Then he got that look on his face. That look, or sometimes a dance, that says ‘I have to go now. Now is the time the going must happen.’

But for Haveman this was THE meeting. Months of preparation had gone into this.

But his anxious face became the dance and everyone in the room knew what was needed. So, taking him by the hand, she led him to the bathroom.

When Haverman returned to the meeting with her little boy, she continued with her presentation. But then the smell of rotten eggs hit her nose.

Through the rest of the meeting, her son passed gas non-stop in a cramped office. She ended the meeting, threw some pamphlets on the table and booked it out of the office.

Haveman reports she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to laugh or cry, but in the end chose both. But the story doesn’t end there, soon after all of this, the phone rang.

They loved her presentation. They wanted to partner with her.

For Haveman, this was a question of faith, of realizing the world she lives in belongs to God and not her own plans and expectations. It’s about the providence of God and not just her own talents and skills.

She realizes that the point is to show up and do the work. To be faithful to what you have been called to.

I will let Haveman’s own words end this article. I don’t think any of us could say it better.

“It is such a gift that God made us finite. We don’t have to be Him. We don’t have to be perfect. We don’t have to hit home runs. Every day, we just have to do our best as an offering before the Lord. Then we can rest, trusting in the knowledge that God will work His purposes through it all.”

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