Wait Upon The Lord

Alright, girls. If you're walking through the book of Esther with me this summer in Bible Study, I confess that I'm about to completely ruin the ending of the Session 5 video. I'm sorry! But I just finished it and it brought me to tears and cries of joy. I can't hold back! In fact, I didn't even hit "stop" on my DVD player, I just walked out of the den with my workbook and Bible and came straight to the computer to journal while it is fresh.

So Beth's been teaching (in the Beth Moore study in Esther, for those of you who don't know what I'm studying) this week on the importance of timing. And she closes the session with the verse Isaiah 40:31. Here's the New American Standard Version...

Yet those who wait for the LORD
Will gain new strength;
They will (B)mount up with wings like eagles,
They will run and not get tired,
They will walk and not become weary.

It's that "Wait upon the Lord" part that's so stinking incredible to me. To paraphrase what Beth said, she made the exasperated statement "What's more exhausting than waiting?!" Oh, how I know that! I've been waiting on finding a job, getting an interview, going to the interview (how stressful is the day of the interview? Those hours before are just excruciating!), waiting to hear back from the interview... did I get the job? (that's the place I'm at right now!). It's all so exhausting.

Bronce gets home from work in the evening and he'll ask me what I've done all day and I don't quite know how to tell him that the WAITING has been so hard! It's making me tired! Like, seriously, mid-way through the day I'm just so TIRED and need a nap or something! This morning I woke up at 9:30. Now, part of that is just laziness, but it's certainly even weirder when you consider I was in bed by 11pm last night. I'm just so tired from the waiting!

You know, I have friends in so many different "places" figuratively right now. I have friends who are pregnant and waiting on baby-related stuff... like finding out the sex of the baby or waiting for the kid to just get BORN already! I also have friends who are desperately trying to get pregnant and waiting monthly to find out if they've had success. I have other friends who are waiting for different test results and things to come back. I have friends who are waiting to be married - who are either in relationships or not, but just hanging on for the day that will happen for them. So I feel like in many ways I'm surrounded by others who are also waiting for something to happen.

So when I read a verse like Isaiah 40:31 and it talks about waiting... and having STRENGTH, I want to look around and see who those people are who feel strong. Because I sure don't! I'm tired! And most of these friends who are waiting would certainly be able to say "I'm tired of waiting for..." or that they're also just physically exhausted from the wait. But how does that sync with the verse that says we'll actually build up our strength?

The more we wait, the weaker we feel. But here's why, girls! When we're waiting on the THING, we'll be exhausted. Look back at the verse... it says "When we wait on the LORD" we will have strength! That's the difference!

Right now I'm waiting to hear back about a job interview from Monday - my DREAM job teaching Math in one of the best high schools in the whole blasted county. And I can sit around, waiting to hear back about the THING - the job. Or I can rest, trusting on the LORD and knowing that if it's not this, it will be something else!

Another point from the video that gives me encouragement is that "God is never inactive." Meaning, when He calls on us to wait, there's a flurry of activity going on in Heaven. The longer He waits, the more He's working! Yes, Lord, may it be so!

Habakkuk 2:3 says (in the NIV) "For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay." (italics mine)

And that last part, that crucial ending of the verse, when read in The Message, says "If it seems slow in coming, wait. It's on its way. It will come right on time." How cool is that! "It will come right on time." I love that! I think I want that tattooed on my forehead... or maybe on my hand so I can see it easier. But still, how awesome is that verse?

So what am I really waiting on? It's a hard thing, but I really want to trust and lean on the Lord right now and know that HE is working something out. Otherwise, if I don't get the job this week, I'll be devastated and even MORE exhausted. But if I'm waiting on the Lord, then bad news won't tear out the ground underneath me, but I'll have spent those days living out the rest of Isaiah 40:31... I'll "gain new strength" and "run and not get tired" and "not become weary."

Praise you, Lord, for this encouragement right when I need it! Let me trust in You, let me wait for YOU, let me know that You are in control and You have the best plans laid. Let me trust that You and Your angels are working out something mighty in the heavens, and let me trust that if this job doesn't go as I want it to, it's only because You've got something better in store.

As I posted on my Facebook recently, if I only trust God when life is easy, I am living in conditional faith. Do I trust Him when life is hard and I'm faced with something fearful? "Perfect love casts out fear" 1 John 4:18 - Thanks be to God!

Prayer and Worry

This morning God gave me a glimpse of His purpose, a dose of His humility, and a reason to pray. Allow me to share this with you.

It all starts with my job stuff. As you know if you've followed my blog, I've felt the Lord pushing me down the path of teaching. However, getting my certification is a near impossibility right now. Long story as to why, but there are some subject-matter tests that are required for secondary education certification and I just can’t jump back into calculus-level math right now without doing some serious preparation. And even then, I’m not sure if it would make sense enough for me to pass the test. I've begun applying for some Pharma stuff in the meantime - it could be a few years before I'm able to figure out the teaching thing, and I'm awfully good at sales! Anyway, I'm so confused and I feel very much at a crossroads.

I have the privilege this summer of facilitating Beth Moore's "Esther" Bible study at my church. This morning I spent a loooong amount of time studying and felt God slamming me in the face with a two-by-four... if He wants me to be a teacher, I’ll be a teacher, dang it! And I hear that, but I’m also so fearful. Although God is taking care of our household, Bronce and I have been frustrated with our financial situation lately. It's the "not knowing" - I think we're hitting the point of "fear." I know that’s straight from Satan to get me to take a job that’s not right for me… and I just don’t know what to do. God's timeline is not clear to me - teach NOW? (where? how?) or get another job and teach later? I’m praying but I’m also worried. And I know "Prayer" and "Worry" aren’t supposed to go together.

As I began reflecting on the word "worry," God started speaking some answers into my heart. I just wrote a lengthy card to a girl - sort of a friend-of-a-friend, noone I know very well. To preserve her anonymity, I'll just say that she's pregnant and found out the baby has some significant problems. It can’t live outside the womb and will probably not live long in utero either. Yet she’s gone against her doctor’s suggestion and refuses to terminate, trusting the Lord to do what is His will. WOW. I mean, seriously… WOW. I cannot even imagine being in that situation. So since I heard about her situation last week, God’s been LAYING her on my heart. I mean, the kind of “laying on my heart” where it’s pressing in, elbows and feet, and I can’t breathe when I think about what she’s going through.

So today I sat down to write her a card. It’s not much, I know that, but it’s all I know to do. And I’m praying over scripture to give her and God sends me to Matthew 6 – the part about Him taking care of the sparrows. So I’m sitting here, writing this card, meditating over that scripture, and trying to imagine what it would be like to have such a huge and pressing problem – something that must drive her to her knees dozens of times a day – and reading the part of Matthew where it says God cares enough to clothe the grass of the field, yet she’s dealing with this unbearable weight. I can't even begin to fathom understanding God's tender care while balancing it with a crisis of that magnitude, yet we're told just that.

"Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith!...So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." - Matthew 6:26-30, 34

Fast forward… the card is sealed and I’m sitting at my desk thinking of my own problems. WHAT?! How can I even call my issues “problems” when I know someone dealing with an issue like that? God has such a profound way of humbling us at the height of our personal pride. I read this in my lesson on Esther this morning:

“We tend to detach from sights and situations that make us feel badly about ourselves – especially when we feel powerless… Here’s the trap, however: If we distance ourselves long enough from real needs, we replace them with those that aren’t… The more detached and self-absorbed we become, the more we mistake annoyances for agonies. It happens to all of us.” (p.92)

Now, me being without a job and unsure of my future is surely more than an “annoyance.” But compared to the unimaginable difficulties around me, it’s hardly an “agony.” So in the course of the last two hours, God has turned my wailing into humility. I can have faith that He is doing something amazing with me. I have no idea what it is! But between the two paths I’ve witnessed today, I’ll gladly choose this one. And I won’t stop praying for my friend, because that’s a pain that requires us to petition the gates of heaven on another's behalf.

Things I Don't Need... Thanks.

Losing your job is such a weird place to be. And right now, it's not a terribly unique place to be. After all, those of us who have been laid off are counted by the thousands and reported on the evening news daily. Every one of you has been touched by the unemployment crisis this year, either having been laid off yourselves, knowing a close friend or family member who has suffered that fate, or you may even have waited by the phone for "the call" to find out the status of your job and received good news.

Unfortunately, many of us did not receive good news on the end of that call, but it doesn't stop people from opening up their big mouths to barf heaps of advice on our well-worn shoes. To be clear, I was on the opposite side of this phenomenon a year ago when one of my best friends and coworkers was laid off from our Big Pharma company. Looking back I remember trying to maintain our relationship by calling her daily and attempting to keep her up to date on the craziness she no longer had to deal with. Did she care? No. Was I able to understand that? Nope.

Now that I'm on the receiving end of these phone calls, I realize how incredibly stupid these conversations can be. There is absolutely no way for someone else to know how hard it is to lose my job... yet at the same time I have these moments of sanity where I can look back and actually be glad for the lay-off. Still, no level of sanity and understanding makes me ready to accept that phone call when you're complaining about how frustrating that same job is. Thanks, but sitting at home, eating Ben & Jerrys by the pint, and scouring the internet while desperately seeking a job doesn't exactly put me in the position to feel bad for you and your job woes.

So today this jerky guy came to take away my company car. In the process of finalizing the paperwork, he attempted to "encourage" me with tales of all the other reps whose cars he's taken... and the fabulous new jobs they have. Dude, you just confirmed I don't even have another car as a backup and you have the nerve to tell me those stories? Not. Helping.

Going back to my friend who was laid off last summer... Now that I'm on the receiving end of this, I know I made some monumental blunders in how I dealt with that challenging situation. Thankfully, we're still as close as ever, but I think that's largely due to her ability to forgive the multiple times I unknowingly put my exceptionally large feet into my even bigger mouth. (Yes, that's a line from Friends.) For that I'm grateful. And I'll be forgiving of the stupid stuff other well-intentioned people say to me, but there are some comments that just must not be repeated.

So, in light of that I've decided to create a list of THINGS I DON'T NEED while looking for a job. And yes, these have ALL happened to me, most have happened more than once, and in amazing displays of thoughtlessness many of these have been combined single conversations resembling a Blazing Tour of Impudence.

1. Don't call me to complain about your new territory. Especially if said territory consists of MY OLD TERRITORY that you took over when I was laid off.

2. Don't complain about your company car. Don't do it. Just shut up.

3. If I wanted to watch the evening news and hear stories about the thousands of people out of a job, I would do it on my own. It's not helpful for you to call me from your company car, on your company phone, say "I understand what you're going through" and clarify that your genius understanding comes from a nightly news special. You do NOT understand and that is Not. Helping.

4. "I'm praying for you." Don't say it unless you really are. Otherwise it's just an empty platitude. I believe in prayer as much as - if not more than - any other person, but don't say it if you don't mean it and aren't really going to do it.

5. "Wow, it must be nice to have all that free time." It would be nicer to have a job, thanks. And if you're so jonesin' for free time, take some vacation.

6. "Sometimes I wish they'd laid me off, too." Why would you even say that to me? Yeah, collecting severance is nice, but you do realize that ends at some point, right? Then what? If you know of some other super-fantastic job out there, share it with ME. You know, the one who actually NEEDS a job!

7. Laid off or Fired? Someone posted this to my Facebook wall, and while no one has directly asked me that question, I completely understand the sentiment. I am very quick to explain to new folks that I was laid off before they could even wonder if the other were true.

8. "The grass is always greener!" "Where there's a will, there's a way!" Gee, thanks for the practical advice and astounding show of moral support. What do these things even mean?!

9. "So have you found something else yet?" Don't you think I might have mentioned that? I'm not one of those strange people who hangs on to good news until the last possible second. If I found a job I'd probably be doing it... not updating my facebook status 17 times a day.

I'm sure there are more that could be added to this list. In fact, I'm positive in the next three days some well-meaning soul will make the dumbest comment I've heard yet. But for now, there's the list.

So what can you do when a friend or family member loses their job? Be supportive! Understand that they're suffering a kind of loss. It's not a death - I realize that! - but there are some similarities to how it's handled. Such as, a time of anger, a time of denial, a time of stunned silence. There are stages to the grief of job loss just as there are stages to losing a loved one. And sometimes, whether or not you loved the job has nothing to do with it. It's just a painful mess, truly.