Here’s a patience prayer for dealing with annoying house managers

 

If ever any employer needed patience in this life, it is parents who hire house managers to help run their home and take care of their children.

Parents hire maids and nannies to look after their children while they go off to work, hoping that they are leaving their kids and their homes in safe hands after carefully selecting the best help. And for months, the arrangements works out well. The children are happy, the house is clean and there are no incidents of indiscipline or children being mistreated by the house manager.

However, there is this phenomenon that rears its ugly head- when the house managers begin becoming careless and annoying, especially when their employers are not the type to constantly nitpick them.

And so, you embark on a life as an employer who is ever annoyed by a house manager who constantly aggravates your children, cooks food carelessly, leaves the children unattended for long periods of time, parking themselves in front of the television for hours and mismanaging their time on your dime. They think you don’t know what they are doing in your absence but you know. Your kids have told you, you’ve seen it on your nanny cams.

You want to blow a gasket and tell them off for their annoying behaviors but you can’t just yet. You don’t have the time to find a replacement and start the entire ‘getting to know you’ process with a house manager. You have fear of the unknown about a new house manager because you are already used to the one in your house. And as you bide your time as you think about a replacement, you spend time issuing silent prayers for patience with the annoying house manager before a new one comes in.

Nairobi News now brings you a patience prayer you can make while you work to recruit a new one with the help of your close friends and village because you obviously don’t just want anyone from anywhere. Shall we give it a try? Here we go (Christian version)…

“Lord, (or higher power you pray to), your word says hot tempers cause arguments but patience brings peace. I am in the middle of it all. I am raging with temper about my house manager. I have tried to calmly correct her when I see that she is not doing what we agreed upon, and she is mishandling my children.

I know my quickest move should be to replace her for the sake of my children and my sanity but as You are a God of second chances, I believe I should give the house manager a second chance too- obviously after having a proper sit down and bringing her back to the line I drew on the ground upon hiring them. They need to toe my line or we part ways. Economic times are hard and I don’t want them to struggle out there when I know we can resolve our working relationship for the better.

So I’m praying for patience. I pray to be slow to anger and to show understanding for why some things are happening. I pray for the wisdom to be able to amicably handle those reasons behind their annoying behavior. Teach me to compassionate, kind, humble and gentle in dealing with the house manager as we evaluate whether we will continue our working relationship or they would have to exit our home.

If at the end of the day we cannot come to a consensus, after privately showing them their fault and correcting them fails to yield desirable results, allow us to release them with the peace of Christ. May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give me the same attitude of mind towards others that Christ Jesus had. Amen.”

By Winnie Mabel