About six months ago, I was given a gift from God—a new job. It had taken more than a year to land it but when I did, I knew without a doubt it was God’s will. Prior to getting the job offer, I had had many hundreds of conversations with God, asking him to help get me out of the miserable job I was in. I told God regularly that I was “blind and cannot see” and that I would need signs the size of a billboard to know which job was the one he intended for me. The sign he sent then was in the form of a cardinal. Even so, I saw it and understood this was the job I was supposed to take. Only one other time in my life have I felt God’s will so completely.
Now that I am at the end of this particular day, I can look back to this morning and understand that the first test of whether I have accepted God’s will about this new job came when Krissy—who’s been in her job about a month—came over to my desk to complain about how the rest of the team decided to work at home today and why can’t she work at home that often and how come there isn’t any work and why does she feel like our team is about to implode? I’ve had those same thoughts occasionally over the last six months but I’ve never voiced them at work. To Krissy I suggested that we have to earn the privilege of working from home and (even though I too feel our small team is about to go down the drain) I tried to offer reassurance that everything will be okay. With each passing day I believe that less and less, but I felt Krissy needed solace not angst. A few minutes later Krissy was satisfied from venting and she went back to her desk.
An hour later we had a conference call meeting with about half our team, each calling in from their off-site locations. In that call, Ethan, our boss, asked me to take on some work and to divide it with Krissy. I’m a wordsmith and Krissy knows numbers. It was clear to me how to divide the work, but I wasn’t sure if Krissy would know all of the tasks she would have to do since she’s so new on the job. So while we were all still on the call I asked Krissy if she understood what Ethan was asking us to do. She mumbled something about not being able to hear, so Ethan briefly highlighted the process steps that Krissy would have to follow to complete the numbers work. He asked if she had any questions and she said, “No, I got it.” But just as soon as the call was done, Krissy was back at my desk. “I don’t know what Ethan is asking me to do.” I bit my tongue and then tried my best to explain what Krissy would need to do. She went back to her desk and I started playing with words to complete my part of the assigned work.
Right after lunch our team once again gathered on a conference call for our weekly team meeting. Ethan discussed several things and then with great pomp announced that Krissy and Kayla were being awarded for outstanding work on a project they completed a couple of weeks ago. I was stunned. Krissy has been on the job one month and she’s had one project and she’s getting an award for it? And Kayla despises Ethan, regularly berates him in meetings, and tells anyone who will listen that he is a horrible manager. In fact, she’s had five interviews in the last ten days for other jobs. At that moment, a pity pot opened up and I fell in. A few moments later that conference call ended and I just sat at my desk and stared at nothing. A multitude of thoughts raced through my head and not a single one could be labeled pretty. And while I sat stewing, Krissy once again appeared at my desk. This was the second test of my acceptance of God’s will.
I congratulated Krissy on her award and she smiled from ear to ear. “I’m just one lucky girl, I guess!” Must be luck because it sure isn’t skills, I thought. I asked Krissy if she had completed her tasks for the project that had been assigned to us earlier in the day. She confidently told me she had completed her quality check and there were no errors. What she didn’t know is that I had finished my part of the work before lunch and having no other work, decided to take a stab at Krissy’s half of the work myself. And in the process, I found several errors in the data. Just to be sure, I explained to Krissy that in the course of doing my work I noticed a couple of errors in the numbers. She was caught off guard, then agreed that indeed there were some errors. She said she’d take another look at the material, but that right then she had another conference call she had to join.
As she walked away, I remembered the pity pot I had fallen into and instantly I was full of anger. Actually, I was somewhat surprised that I could be so angry so fast about something so silly. And that’s when I understood the events of the day had hit a core hurt of mine—not being acknowledged or appreciated. As I type this now I feel so silly. But the truth is this is an enormous core hurt that I’ve fought my entire life. Blame it on the fact that I’m the youngest child of eight kids or that I was sexually abused at the age of twelve and an orphan by the time I was sixteen. I could list fifty other reasons to justify this core hurt. It’s real. I know it. And I deal with it. And in that moment, as I sat stewing at my desk, I knew the day wasn’t going to get any better. Quitting time for me was still a half hour away. The rest of the team was on a conference call and would be for another ninety minutes. I bolted.
In the time it took me to ride the express elevator down from the fifteenth floor, I had an entire day-long argument transpire in my head. I was so angry at myself for being jealous that Krissy and Kayla had been rewarded for their efforts. I was mortified that I had the gall to question God’s will whether this really was the right job for me. And I despised myself for falling into the pity pot. When I reached the lobby, I was an emotional mess. All I could think about was going home and soaking in a hot bath. I walked to the bus stop and leaned against the building and waited, still berating myself. I looked down the street, hoping the next bus would be in my sights. It wasn’t. Instead, I saw God’s billboard.
In the horrible job that I left six months ago, I worked with Liz, who is the sister of the company’s owner. Liz understood the struggles I had with my then-boss, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it. Her brother owned the company and he was going to make all the decisions. A few months before I left the company, Liz suddenly quit. She went on vacation and never came back. She even sent her daughter in to collect her personal items. For a time we all thought perhaps Liz had taken ill, but over time we learned she had just had enough. Clearly I could relate. I was just as desperate to get out of that awful situation.
So the third test of my acceptance of God’s will came as I stood leaning up against the building at the bus stop and watched as Liz came walking down the sidewalk. At first she didn’t see me but as she came closer, the emotional war I had been battling was instantly gone for I knew Liz represented God’s Billboard. Clearly she was the visual reminder that I needed in that moment to remind me of all the bad stuff I had left behind in my previous job and all the good things that had entered my life since taking my new job. By the time Liz threw her arms around me in a hug, the scowl on my face had turned into a smile. Truly, God works in mysterious ways.
My 4 Daughters Plus 2 