Faith In The Shutdown: 1 Federal Worker’s 6 Weeks Without Pay

Every morning at 6:15, my aunt, Diane Thorne, rises. She prays and opens her laptop. The coffee brews, the inbox loads, and another unpaid workday begins. For more than 30 years, she’s been the steady force behind her division in the Office of Business Management, where she processes promotions, tracks time sheets, and keeps the gears turning quietly behind the scenes. But for the last six weeks, that rhythm has come with a void: no paycheck and no certainty, just faith.

She is one of roughly 730,000 federal employees still required to work without pay as the government shutdown drags into its sixth week. Another 670,000 have been furloughed altogether. In total, about 1.4 million federal workers have missed a full paycheck, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.

“I’m frustrated and sad because we’re living in an undecided world,” she says. Her words carry the exhaustion of millions navigating this limbo where bills stack up, savings dwindle, and the question of when feels heavier each day.

From her dining-room workspace, she logs on anyway. Unlike many of her colleagues, she’s one of the roughly 10% of federal workers nationwide who are fully remote. But working from home doesn’t shield her from the strain; it only blurs the line between duty and depletion. The laptop hums, the phone rings, the same reports get filed, but the deposit line in her account stays blank.

Every day this shutdown passes, my aunt clings to routine to stay grounded: morning prayers, check-ins with her daughter and sisters, an afternoon walk, healthy meals, and sunlight through the window. For her, these rituals are survival. They mark time in a world where the usual rhythms of work and compensation have broken down.

Her story refuses to linger on politics or partisanship. Instead, it illuminates the human cost of government dysfunction and the quiet courage it takes to keep showing up when the system fails you. Behind every headline about “federal workers” are people like her who are disciplined, faithful, and stretched thin by uncertainty.

Mekhi Neal is a junior Journalism major at Howard University with a passion for storytelling and broadcast media. He focuses on highlighting the experiences and resilience of students, especially within HBCU communities. You can follow him on Instagram.

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