Tuesday, November 18, 2008

A layoff is a scary thing. I wonder where my next job will come from. The news all looks so scary. The negative news stories are seeming more ominous than they probably are. I forget the fact that people are still being hired, that jobs are still being filled and that better than 93% of the people who want to work are working.

I am amazed when other people take my upcoming layoff so casually. Makes me wonder how many times I have casually dealt with devastating events in someone else's life. Knowing this has been coming does not really make it easier, although there is some consolation to not being handed a box and escorted out the door without finishing projects, putting everything in order and calmly collecting your effects.

I have seen people escorted from the building upon giving their notice. It was my first concrete indicator that the company I was working for at the time was not who they claimed to be. Their darling, (and truly one of the sweetest and most competent people on the project) who had moved around the country from project to project for them, had been offered a position where she could go home and not move around. Their reaction was instant removal from the premises. She was humiliated and left the office in tears in front of 200 or so of her co-workers, clients and sub-contractors. It was horrible.

Anyway, for some reason, this feels like a death to me. I want to close my door and bawl like a baby, even while I reach for and cling to hope. I KNOW that my redeemer lives. I know that I am not abandoned or forsaken. Yet I run to him as a frightened child. Outwardly I am calm, inwardly I am in turmoil. During these last few weeks I have gone from calm to upset, to peaceful, to sad, to sad and peaceful, to scared and weak and devastated.

I alternately dread and look forward to the future. Yet another adventure where I must run out and hope that I have remembered my kerchief and my pipe. Yet another road to travel where no one has provided a map. I get to a guidepost but none of the choices seem better than the other, no path looks clear.

I am seeking an open door through which I may walk. Sometimes my courage is real, based on who I know holds me, and sometimes it seems more like whistling in the dark to show a courage I have yet to find. The hope is in this--I need not worry. My God will never leave me. He has not abandoned me, nor does he stand back and ask me to let him know what I work out. He has already prepared the way before me, even though I cannot see. It has been wild and crazy so far, I wonder what he has next?

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