Lika Liku Luka's

CHAPTER 15

Each family has its own story and meaning. Both a happy story and a tear-jerking story. Stories about parents, relatives, or relatives in the family. There are meanings and lessons to be learned from every story we have in the family.

Happy families are all the same; every unhappy family becomes unhappy in its own way.” Leo Tolstoy in Anna Karenina

Which man in the world does not want to have something perfect, including a family? Only God has the right to perfection. Not human. The family is the main place where every human individual grows and undergoes the salt acid journey of his life.

I am the eldest of three brothers. At this time I have stepped on the head of three and still single. My relationship with my family is very close. You could say I can't live far from my family. “Teu can be jeung teu widely inhaled ninggalkeun kolot, indit ka place anu far." So my mother often said in Sundanese. It means not being able to and not daring to live to leave the old man, to go to a distant place.

Do I really not have the courage to live away from my family and build a new life for myself? Of course not. I want to be able to step into a new place of life and build a life that is my dream. Limited circumstances make me not able to realize it all. However, I have always been convinced that God will give every servant a good life, sooner or later, various paths and opportunities, as long as the servant is always kind enough to think of Him and keep trying on the right path, not the other way around.

I was the backbone of the breadwinner for my father, mother, and two younger siblings. Education that is only limited to high school graduates makes not many job options that I can get. Especially in the small town where I live today. For almost eleven years I worked as an administrative staff at a company located close to my home. Although the salary is only limited to UMK numbers, this job I continue to do because I have not been able to get a new job with a better salary.

I've been trying to apply for a job somewhere else. However, there is no sustenance. Again I tried to instill a good guess in God. There will always be new knowledge and experience even though I still work in the same company for a dozen years. For me, sustenance is not just limited to money that can be saved in savings.

The journey of a family life will certainly not be accompanied by happiness or joy. There is always sadness or grief experienced by each individual in family life. My father's decision twenty years ago, precisely in the year 2000, had a major impact on my life to this day.

Finally, my father retired and supported us from his monthly pension allotment to this day. Although not big. From the compensation that the company gave to employees who applied for early retirement, my father was still able to build a permanent home that until now was still sturdy for us to live in. In contrast to some of my father's colleagues whose compensation money is not at all used up in the middle of the road. Used for fun. Finally, until there are people who experience mental disorders and abandoned by their families, wives, and even children.

At this point I am very grateful. On the one hand, my father's decision to retire early is something we regret a lot. Why didn't my father take the mutation option to another branch of the company following some of his co-workers? Why my father also at that time refused the help of a mother brother who wanted to give capital to open an electronics store because he knew that he could electronics and understand very well not necessarily the rest of the compensation money that there could used for business capital?

The more days I get, the more I understand that only God can change the heart and mind of man. As powerful, as accurate, and as good as our arguments against one's problems, if God does not want to change that person's stand, there is no use for all our arguments. I am trying to accept God's destiny with grace. I have always believed that behind every suffering, there will always be goodness and happiness that God has prepared for every servant who will accept every gift of God. Either it's a gift or it's a disaster.

The tough days are certainly up to us after my father's decision to take early retirement. For additional daily living costs and school costs, although not always there every day, my father received the service of repairing household electronic devices, installing water pumps, to installing electrical installations. My father also received a freelance job from an SPBU as an electrician and a machine.

My mother doesn't care about prestige either. To help the family economy to keep turning, mothers receive jobs ranging from washing clothes from neighbors, cleaning boarding houses, cooking at wedding receptions, to keeping people who are being treated in the hospital. School fees were a little helped because when Junior High School and High School several times I got scholarship money from writing competitions that I participated in.

After graduating from school and getting a job, I also tried to help the family economy as much as I could, in the midst of all the limitations. Most of my salary was spent on food, utilities, and school fees for my two sisters. The rest of the salary is only enough to buy credit and a little wallet contents for supplies at work.