This is the day I've been looking forward to for about 18 months now. My job is pretty good. I like the people on my team and the work is challenging. I pretty much set my own schedule and direct my own project, so there's no real boss to micromanage me or bust my chops (I actually seek out opportunities to use that phrase). But when I took the job, I knew I wasn't supposed to. I prayed about it and I actually got a pretty clear answer that I was not supposed to accept the position. But I took it anyway. Because it was exciting, I liked the idea of having some extra cash, and I felt a bit of obligation to the people asking me to stay (for a two year contract above the couple of month project I had originally signed on for).
So, every day on the way to work, I wondered whether that was the day I was going to get in a car crash or the day that my child would get hurt at pre-school or at a sitter's house where he or she would not have been had I not taken the job against the prompting I had received earlierb. Mostly, I assumed there would be a car wreck or other tragedy involved. It's horrible, but that's what I assumed.
Until this past couple of months. Because of the unexpected death of a coworker and some other circumstances, I've ended up picking up a good portion of a major project at work. Instead of 20 hours a week, I've been working 40-50+ hours per week. Making sacrifices at home in the form of laundry and dishes and homework undone, and not getting to do much of my own work project. And it occurred to me at one point, that my job was making me pretty unhappy. (Not miserable, not angry, just tired and stressed and very busy). It occurred to me as strongly as the answer I received at the beginning, that this was the reason why Heavenly Father did not encourage me to take the job. He knew, and I really believe this, that I would find myself in a significantly unhappy state for a good month and that a great cause of that unhappiness would be my unavailability to meet the basic needs of my family (fast food every night, scrounging for clean clothes, etc. ) It wasn't TRAGEDY. It wasn't a car crash. But it was important to me.
And I am amazed and grateful that we have a Heavenly Father who cares enough about us to warn us about the non-car crashes in our lives. He wants us to be happy. And he wants to steer us in directions that will lead to happiness. We just have to be humble and faithful enough to listen.
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This made my eyes sting with tears. I tend to think in terms of car crashes too and not only does this post make me realize that God has a real hand in our lives but it also makes me realize how the mundane things like dishes laundry and trash getting done can have such a real impact on our lives. I am grateful for this post because it makes me feel like what I have been trying to do successfully for the last ten years actually matters...even though I am not very good at it. Thanks for sharing.
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