There's a word that I've used over and over again to describe "how I'm doing" with the whole job hunt thing. I've used it most often as a sort of response to the sideways, inquisitive and trying-my-best-to-mask-my-serious-concern-that-you're-not-really-looking-yet faces that accompany my initial verbal response: I haven't really gotten there yet...
It's the best word I can find to describe where I'm really at with things.
Daunting.
The prospect of putting in a resume: not so bad. The idea of taking an actual interview: bit more unnerving. The idea of beginning again (yet again) in a new place as the new kid in town: quite entirely daunting.
Over the last few years with all of the many things that have flipped over in our lives again and again and again, one constant that I often took for granted is the fact that I unlike most my age actually worked in the same place solid for going on seven years. At twenty five, that's quite a rarity. Whether positive or negative, the jury is still out, but a rarity nonetheless.
That's longer than I've spent in any school I've ever attended. Longer than the vast majority of friendships I've had (except the legendary loves). Longer by far than my very longest relationship. Longer even I think than the time I spent as a youth leader at our last church.
In short, without realizing it along the way, my job, the place where I was just killing time until I graduated and then dove head first into ministry, became something of a steadying force in my life. With all its stress, long hours, unpredictability - it still had the same calming, grounding pull that any place would given that much an investment of time. Familiar faces, familiar duties, familiar halls to walk. The sense of steadiness and belonging. The sense of having earned your place at the table. Even the crazy rhythym with which new staff cycled in and out came to be familiar. Bare halls each Christmas. Booming noise each fall. Predictable. Known.
I don't mean to write a sonnet to my old job. I learned much there. I grew much there. But all those who know the details know that it was far from perfect.
But somehow in spite of all of that, loosing a job, even one that I knew from the beginning I shouldn't keep forever, feels like just another way in which we have been uprooted and unhinged.
"I suppose I should be used to saying goodbye by now." Something like that was said in a movie we saw recently. I suppose I should be used to it. To loss. To sudden. To unexpected.
I suppose that I should be used to uprooted, used to unhinged. Used to beginning again. Again.
Should there being the operative word. I should. But I am not.
Perhaps it is that this is the first time in this grueling sequence that an uprooting has been just my own to face. Not belonging to myself and my comrades - my fellow exiles. Perhaps it is because this is the first time that I wander alone (although certainly not unsupported - everyone has been so great).
But I think in all likelihood it has more to do with being tired. I love an adventure. But I also love the familiar comfort of home. I love roots and I love wings. I need both to feel satisfied in life and lately it seems as though the scales have tipped toward the unknown and there is yet no climbing back up that slick surface to a place of balance between the two.
And so we dangle in the place where few things are sure. Where there are new trails to be blazed and new challenges to take on at every turn. Where there are new hearts to learn, new faces to explore, new lives to be had.
And while I am grateful that the Lord has brought refreshing newness in such wonderful ways to so many aspects of our lives; the stubborn, silly (and probably just plain tired) part of me looks upon a new venture in the professional realm and sees daunting rather than promising. Exhausting rather than exciting. Intimidating rather than inviting.
Silly self.
And so the old effort again. To remind my soul that He is the great constant. And that He truly does work all things together for the the good of those who love Him. No matter what those things may be.
Self: remember. He has done it. Time and time again. He is endlessly faithful and He has never failed us yet. So courage, dear heart.
And begin again.
Again.
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