Surviving the Real World

It's Saturday and I just got back from helping my husband move personal things out of his office. This week he lost his job. He did NOT lose his paycheck. But everything he has worked for and done for almost the last 8 years has been taken away. They moved him out to Oregon, we bought a house and less than 2 years later, they are telling him that he has to move again in a year. Personally, I just want to SLAP someone. He is not the only one who got the short end of the stick...but I am pretty sure he did get the shortest stick. Again.

When I am able to look past the fear and anger of the situation, I KNOW God can work this in to yet another amazing chapter in our book. But we are, of course, in the "pause" of it all...wondering how and IF God is going to work this out...and by "if" I guess I mean is God going to work it out the way we think it should work out. It's funny how we like to fool ourselves in to feeling like we are in control of ANY situation. I know I'm not in control. And I know. God can do ANYTHING. But right now I don't have a clue what is going to happen. And I guess I find it more tolerable to THINK I know what is going on than to walk around in a daze knowing I don't.

Tom could write a book. I've already come up with a title. 'How to Survive Your Employer Sucking the Life Out of You - One Breath at a Time." In the middle of last year, they made Tom move his office. He went from a nice windowed view to a small windowless office. Then one of his hourly employees quit (actually she transferred to a different job working for a friend in the same company) and for SOME reason, in doing that, she created a HUGE problem between Tom's boss and his boss's boss. They actually, literally yelled at him for over an hour for letting her take another job. Working for her former boss and personal friend. I'm not sure how Tom could have changed that or why he would even want to. She was a good employee...and good at what she did, but she was an hourly employee that Tom had NO control over her hourly pay...his boss did. But somehow, it was Tom's fault. There have been other things but this one was the one that started to make Tom not feel the love anymore... And then this week happened. His boss lost his job and so did his boss's boss. They split the division that Tom was a manager of, took away all of his employees, gave them and his job to some one who has worked there for less than 6 months AND...put Tom under the one person in that division that has caused him problems for years. OUCH.

Tom came home from work the day after this news hit him and Zach said, "Did you quit?" Oh, Zachy...you can't DO that in the real world. There are house payments and car payments and bills and... So, after the initial shock of the week has sunk in and we have realized that we would have to pay back our 1st time homeowners $8k incentive because we haven't lived here for 3 years and, oh yeah, we bought a $180k house in a dead market in a town with a higher than the national average rate of unemployment. Not to mention the prices of housing plummeting. Except in Portland...where they want us to move. There is NO way we can pay back 8k, sell our house we've had for less than 2 years (at best for a profit and at worse...at all!) and move to Portland. And, oh yeah- we don't WANT to, either! We JUST got settled here!

Tonight, after hitting a wall at his work and yelling that I hate what they did to my husband, I realized something. WHY do we expect light from darkness? Yes, the did him wrong. Why would that surprise me? I SO want Tom to get treated with the same integrity that he treats others with...but he never is. They aren't Tom and they don't play by God's rules. WHY do we expect light from darkness?

So I pause and I try to make some God sense out of it. We really felt, that as hard as it was to leave Illinois, it was what God wanted us to do. Our biggest fear was getting out her and Tom losing his job because there aren't many other jobs around here...well, that has sort of happened. He hasn't physically lost his job...but he sure has lost the desire to work there. But we started talking. If God wanted us out here, in this place...how else could we get here? Tom's employer is one of the top 3 employers in this town. The school and the hospital are the other two. He has no medical background and he doesn't have teaching credentials so...it isn't like anything other than his company would have ever gotten us out here. There would be NO other way we would have come. We wouldn't look here for a job...it wasn't part of OUR plan. So, I think God is up to something. I'd love to know what, but...He isn't sharing just yet. So I have to do one of those things that do NOT come easily. I have to trust God knows better than I do. And you know what bugs me the most about that? That it doesn't come easily for me. God is the only one who has never let me down...so why can't I just let go of all that junk I keep mulling over in my mind and trust Him?

Well, I'm working on it....