Factory Prayers

June 4, 2011

This past Tuesday, I spent all night praying for something, and at 2:30 Wednesday morning exactly the opposite of what I had prayed for took place.

And I was completely ok with that.

It wasn’t because I didn’t care—for most of the night, it was all I could think about.  My ADHD mind would wander for half an hour or so, but as soon as it would make its way back around to the issue that was troubling me, fear and anxiety seized my heart and I would send an urgent prayer in the direction of my God.  And yet, when the moment of truth came, in which God would reveal that exactly what I didn’t want was the case, I had a greater sense of peace than I could possibly have expected.

Let me explain.

I work at Goodman Manufacturing.  That is, I spend 12 hrs (4pm-4am) in a factory inserting these:

They call them hairpins, but they're too big. Maybe Rapunzel could use them.

into these:

Just looking at it gives me the chills (which I guess is the point, because it's part of an air conditioner).

over and over again.  They call it lacing (yep, my moderately-cool-sounding-in-a-moderately-nerdy-way job title is “lacer”), and I do it in temperatures ranging from a pleasant 90 to a balmy 130.  (Again, we’re making air conditioners.  Again, there’s definitely some irony there.)

When I first started at Goodman, they told me that I would work 12-hour shifts every Sunday-Tuesday, and every other Wednesday.  Then, my third day on the job, my supervisor Tony dropped the bomb that changed things: temporarily (which could mean the entirety of my employment there, because I’m going back to Bryan for my senior year in August), many employees will be required to work an extra shift every week.  Refusal to do so could end in termination.  When I first heard of this new policy, my heart froze.  I had convinced myself to take the job with the rationale that I would never have to spend more than four days a week in the factory.

Still, I don’t think I truly believed I would have to work any extra shifts.  I comforted myself with the thought that I wasn’t experienced enough, fast enough or motivated enough to catch the boss’s eye.  Why would they want me to work any more than I’d thought I was obligated to?

All those illusions came crashing down at 3am Thursday morning, May 26.  With only one hour left in my 48-hr work week, I was on cloud nine because I was going to be off for the next three days.  Then, all of a sudden, Tony was at my side, informing me that I would be working Saturday night.  Mandatory.  Overtime.  I suppose if money was my top priority, that would have been music to my ears—especially because overtime pay could be pretty significant.  However, the job was taking its toll and I needed the time off.  Though I would still have Thursday and Friday, the thought of working Saturday in addition to my regular hours the following Sun-Tues was genuinely frightening.

Maybe I’m blowing this out of proportion.  

What job could be so bad that it warrants anxiety and panic attacks multiple times a week, even during off days?  Men and women throughout history—and even throughout the world today—have worked longer hours than I, for less pay, and supported entire families doing so.  Mandatory overtime would be a boon for probably the vast majority of the world’s population.

Not me.  

I often feel stifled, disgusting, disgusted, oppressed, nauseated and hopeless while punching the clock at Goodman.  Good conversation is impossible both because the place is incredibly loud and because my coworkers are more interested in dropping f-bombs and complaining about one another than actually discussing anything.  The heat is stifling beyond anything I can describe, and we’re required to wear long pants and gloves that go up past our elbows, leaving very little skin exposed to the fans that are ostensibly supposed to cool us off.  Walking outside into the record heat of this first week of June has been an amazing relief from the oppressive temperatures inside.

And it isn’t just the heat—it’s also the duration and the endless repetition.  Twelve hours is a long time to spend doing anything, but when that something is lacing, it can seem unbearably long.  Lacing is not a difficult job, and at times it can even be enjoyable, but it gets old.  Fast.

But if I haven’t convinced you that my job is worth the anxiety I experience on the eve of every first shift of the week (such as tonight), that’s probably because it isn’t.

However, it is also not unprecedented.  One of my closest friends described similar emotions when he spent the summer before our senior year of high school working in a carpet factory.  The anxiety and depression he experienced that summer completely derailed his motivation to do anything, so much so that he flunked out of college his sophomore year and has now enlisted in the military to regain his discipline (I hear that works pretty well, actually).

Maybe it’s spiritual attack–in fact, couple of years ago I would’ve jumped to that conclusion immediately.  Today, however, I’ve come to realize that I don’t understand my own frailty, brokenness and need for God until it is shoved in my face with so much force that it knocks me over.  Whenever I think I’m ok, I don’t seek God, but whenever I’m painfully aware of my not-ok-ness, I fall on my face weeping before Him.

And that seems to be where He wants to meet me—in the heat, sweat and anxiety of a job that I literally hate.

Maybe, then, it isn’t spiritual attack, but my own brokenness bubbling up because I simply can’t keep it down.  And maybe that’s exactly what God wants me to be experiencing, because it shows me that He is the only way out.

So, back to Tuesday night/Wednesday morning.  

Early this week, I made plans to spend my days off (Wed-Fri) at my grandmother’s house with Sarah.  Even in the midst of making these plans, however, I vividly remembered my mandatory overtime shift from the previous week.  Hoping against hope that Tony would not derail my plans by saddling me with another such shift, I went into work on Tuesday afternoon at 4.  For the next 10 hours, every time I thought of the wonderful rest I could experience at my grandmother’s, I was reminded in a flash that I might have to work instead.  I prayed fervently and constantly that I would not be given an extra shift, and yet around 2:30 Wednesday morning Tony informed me that I would again be working on Saturday.

I still was able to go to my grandmother’s house, and it was wonderful.  However, here I am in my apartment at 3 on Saturday morning, dreading where I will be in 13 hrs and wishing with all my soul that tomorrow was the day off that it is supposed to be.  And I’m thinking that I’m exactly where God wants me, because it is here that I know I can never cease to look to Him.  Perhaps this dread, panic and anxiety will not go away all summer, but I’m completely ok with that, because the process of working through it is where God shows me that I will never, ever be alone—even in the loudest, hottest department of a loud, hot factory in Dayton, Tennessee.