Unemployment, part 12

Yay, this is the finale of my Unemployment blog-post series! I finally get to write about my new job! I'm processing a few different things in my head right now, but I'll try to compile them all here, and hopefully I can get them to flow together nicely. Perhaps this post could also be titled "Who you listen to makes all the difference."

"And the Lord restored Job's losses when he prayed for his friends. Indeed the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before." (Job 42:10)

Last night after work, I had some time to kill before a church service, so I decided to go to PetSmart and browse, e.g., stare at the cats. A couple of them stared back. One of them, I think, was hallucinating (or perhaps he was vision-impaired?), because he wouldn't look right at me, but his eyes were following something that seemed to be buzzing around his cage. Another one was hiding under his bedding, and I saw one of his eyes peering out at me from under his covering. Scenes like these melt my heart and move me with compassion.

This morning while I was hanging out with my cats, I remembered that Macho was a PetSmart cat. (His previous owner acquired him that way.) While I was holding him in my arms this morning, I told him that I think I understand his issues. Perhaps sitting in a cage all day while strangers come by and stare at you will really mess with your head. Macho was store merchandise. But he isn't anymore. Now he's my baby.

"But You have seen, for You observe trouble and grief, to repay it by Your hand. The helpless commits himself to You; You are the helper of the fatherless." (Psalm 10:14)

" 'For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now I will arise,' says the Lord; 'I will set him in the safety for which he yearns.' " (Psalm 12:5)

Several days ago, I caught part of a TV show. A preacher said, "God doesn't respond to poverty." Um, yes, He does. It says so right there in my Bible; the verses I quoted above are just a couple of examples. (I heartily disagree with a lot of what that TV preacher said.) I'm made in God's image. I think He responds to poverty and dire circumstances in a similar way in which I responded to the cats at PetSmart: with compassion. And God is the most powerful Being in the universe, so when He helps people, He does it mightily, classily, and in the best way imaginable. And He's gentle, too.

I think Job can vouch for this. And, incidentally, I don't think it was an accident that I was reading the Book of Job while I was looking for a job. (Get it? Job, job? Heh.) Not to say that one little job loss compares to the life-torture that Job endured. But it was interesting, helpful, and timely to read about how Job lost everything that was important to him (family, resources, physical health), attracted really bad advice while he was grieving ("Hey, Job, this is probably all your fault because you sinned"), and got the lecture of his life from the God of the universe ("Oh, so you think you know all the answers, little man? Let Me tell you a thing or two").

About 2 years ago, I heard a loud, booming voice tell me to update my resume. I didn't think it was God until the stuff hit the fan at my previous job and I realized that I needed to find new job. Then about a year after that, I got fired, and God began to lead me very gently through the unemployment minefield. As I blogged previously, I thought God had told me that I would only be unemployed for 3 months. This "word" was inaccurate. (I was unemployed for 6 months.) When I asked God about it afterwards, He explained, "I let you hear things." Indeed He does. Tweaking my ability to discern His voice out of the other noises that fly through the airways has definitely been an adventure. I would like to share a few "messages" that I've heard throughout the years, some spiritual and some physical:

1) "Just do what's in front of you." This is something that God taught me during these past 6 months of unemployment. This is consistent with Matthew 6:34, where Jesus basically says to just take care of the stuff you need to take care of today, instead of freaking out about stuff that may or may not happen tomorrow. For example, I wondered if I should drop what I was doing and set up an online portfolio (instead of using the hardcopy one that I compiled during my last semester of college, back in the dark ages) so that I could use it in my job search. God gently showed me that setting up an online portfolio wasn't a task that was directly in front of me. What was in front of me was applying for jobs, period, so I did that. Turns out, I didn't need to set up an online portfolio. I got a job with my dark-ages hardcopy portfolio. This is one example of God teaching me basically to get into the discipline of tackling my tasks one day at a time.

2) "Don't give up looking for a full-time writing job." This is something that God gently kept nudging me to do this past summer when the job market was looking very bleak and my chances of finding anything in my degree field weren't looking good at all. But it sounded like He believed in me, so I went for it. Speaking of people who believe in me...

3) "You'll never make any money." This is something that my birth father told me in high school when I told him that I wanted to become a writer instead of a pharmacist. (Becoming a pharmacist was my birth mother's idea. There's nothing wrong with that idea except... well... it's not me.) I guess I was naively expecting him to be excited for me, but perhaps instead I got an earful of what was really in his heart. Um, thanks for believing in me? Um, thanks for speaking a poverty curse over me? Um, I'm not going to listen to that guy anymore.

4) "You don't get your own office." My previous boss told me this when I was complaining to her about the noisy, distracting work environment. Sometimes a chick just needs some peace and quiet in order to get some work done. My boss scoffed at me when I tried to appeal to her authority. All I asked for was quietness. She explained, "If I don't get my own office, you don't get your own office." Some time after that, she fired me. Now I have my own office. Non-toxic work environment, check. Peace and quiet, check. Vindication, check.

5) [insert very gentle nudge here] During my last week of unemployment, after I had already made all my required work-search contacts for the week, I felt an extremely gentle prompting that I should check an online job board one more time. I did, and I was very surprised to see a certain job listed there. I'm not sure why I had missed it previously, but I'm convinced that it was God who prompted me to check that job board, because that was the job I ended up getting. Less than 12 hours after I applied for the job, I was contacted for an interview, then I proceeded with my temp job, and then the day after I finished my temp job, I was offered my current job. I started 2 days ago. This entire process definitely has God's fingerprints all over it.

Some time before I was offered the job, God reminded me how He restored to Job double everything that he had lost. I don't remember the exact words of our conversation, but God was like, "Would you like Me to do that for you, too?" So, I was like, "Sure." Voilà, instant restoration.

And that's just a job. Psalm 23:3 assures me that God is interested in restoring more than just a stupid little job. He's interested in restoring my entire soul, and He's interested in doing so for His name's sake. During this entire unemployment season (which wasn't my first, but it sure was a doozy), I learned a lot of extremely important lessons. For instance, God is more interested in my life than I am. Psalm 33:19 assures me that God will keep me alive during a famine. This time around, I wasn't exactly living in the lap of luxury in the middle of a desert. I was mainly just kept ALIVE. Alive is pretty darn important. I'll take it.

And it was very sweet to see Him vindicating me. I went on several job interviews. At first, I was very insecure about explaining how/why I got fired from my previous job. But towards the end, it was eerily satisfying to see the compassionate/indignant looks on people's faces when I would explain what my previous job was like. "I'm sorry that that happened to you." "Well, if they put your desk in front of a breakroom and a stairwell, no wonder you couldn't get any work done."

So, Tirzah is back. Life isn't perfect, but the most perfect Being in the universe is in charge of my life, so I'm good to go.

It has been a lot of fun to see God answer all those crazy prayers that I prayed during the past 6 months (and even before then). I asked Him to play employer-employee matchmaker, and He did. I wanted to stand on His feet while He danced, and He let me do that.

During my unemployment, I was very desperate, so I cried out to Him very desperately. Yeah, that's right. God responded to my poverty. He did so gently, with compassion, with love, with power, with class, and in a better way than I could have imagined for myself. I'm very thankful for my brand-new job. I know I won't be there forever, but I know it will be an excellent place for me to be, hopefully for a very long while. Sometimes a chick just needs a full-time job in order to save up to go back to school.

I've never been trapped inside a cage at PetSmart, but I'm glad God chose me, rescued me out of my eternal trap, and adopted me. Providing a way out of my sin was infinitely more important than providing a teeny little job. But I sure am glad He did both.