And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.

–Galatians 6:9

Today was my last day of work. For the last three and a half years, I worked at Duke’s clinical microbiology lab doing infectious disease testing. I started a few months before graduating university; it was my first “real life job.”

When I first started, there was so much to learn and so much to take in. I loved it. I tried to take every opportunity to absorb everything I could. As a new person, my only duty was to learn so that I could better serve later.

As time went on and I earned my stripes to became useful, I ended up giving and teaching more than I got to learn in return. It was exhausting and draining, and I had many more moments of feeling burned out and stressed than the enthusiasm and joy of working in a field as dynamic as microbiology.

It became increasingly difficult to put in more effort than was required, but our fellowship’s study in Galatians reminded me that we shouldn’t work for human recognition, but rather for God’s kingdom. But as an imperfect and fallen human, I became more aware of how much I, selfish and proud Jasmin, was getting in the way of people seeing God through me. I tried very hard to change things, but it didn’t feel like I made headway as more and more days felt like bad crazy days at work than days where I felt like I had made a positive impact on my workplace as a mission field.

As I was making my exit from the lab, I got a lot of comments about how people would miss me and hope that I would come back to work with them again when I got back. I wrote an email telling them that the credit goes to God. It was an encouragement to know that even if I didn’t always see the fruit of my efforts in the lab, that there is something that they’ll miss when I’m gone. Hopefully everyone will come to know that what they’re missing is the God part of the vessel that was present.