Nineveh-negar

Sometimes I just want to drive.

The air is quick, crisp and fluid as it whirls around a vehicle trekking over destination-free pavement. Nothing is quite like the pleasant emptiness, the personal solace of an empty highway. So open, so free. It's a breath of fresh air.

Sometimes I just want to recline.

A fireside chair, double-stuffed with plushy goodness. The sweet melody of faint music gracing the air as a subtle fragrance. The crackle and flicker of the warm fire, radiating comfort and light while shadows dance with glee across the motionless room. It is where friends gather, thoughts played with, company enjoyed. Like a thick sweater on a chilled, winter day. It is comfort.

My body has been aching with the stiff-jointed protest of illness over the past couple of days. Sleep has largely evaded my grasp, as it feels much like I've been eating (breathing) nothing but a constant ribbon of sandpaper every second of each passing day. Not my idea of bliss, let me tell you.

What makes this worse is that my head has become filled with a dense fog, making things difficult to remember, and causing my observational insight to lose much of its lustre. Alas. Not many more moons before this sickness leaves for the hills... Unless I've contracted something really worth talking about, and if I have, rest assured, my next blog entry would be coming from some sort of nurse-o'erseen pasture.

Present physicality aside, I've been learning much over the past two weeks. A lot of it has to do with faith and my responsibility with it. To put it another way, I've been arguing with God over what's best for me for a while now. Our ideas of what's best for me haven't really been lining up lately, and it's difficult to accept. Here's the story:

Prelude to a Dream

Six weeks ago, I handed in my notice of resignation to the one job I've had since graduating university. I had been working at that job for no more than seven weeks, and I had already come to loathe my occupation.

The work wasn't really that bad: I was assistant managing a high-volume, upper-tier (ish) kitchen. Pretty standard and straightforward stuff, if you know what you're doing. What made it bad were the relationships there. As an assistant manager, I was told by my boss that I would have just as much authority in the kitchen as any other member of the management staff, and that I should act accordingly. Unfortunately, my fellow managers didn't seem to get that memo, and within a manner of hours after my first shift, I had been called aside and told to back down, fall in line & do what I was told. That would've been fine by me--if the things that I was being told to do were good choices that would improve productivity and efficiency or even boost employee morale. Turned out that I didn't have that much luck, and as soon as I "fell in line," my co-managers began treating me as a staff-member, ordering me around & making decisions without me, telling me that I would be told something if I needed to know about it. All in all, not a very good way to work as a team. So I quit.

Doing the Impossible

I had decided to put in my resignation while having had three job interviews lined up and ready to go right after my last day of work. If those positions didn't pan out, I had already 4 or 5 other available positions in the hot and desperate economy that is Alberta. Never once did I expect that I would end up unemployed for any length of time. That would be impossible, right? Turns out that the impossible actually does happen, as the first three interviews I had ended with "Thanks for your interest, but another candidate has come along who more closely fits what we are looking for."

My back up plan? Disappeared without even so much as a flash. I didn't get a phone call, letter or e-mail from those applications--or the next 25 applications/resumes that I sent out over the next two weeks. Nothing was seeming to work.

All the while in my unemployment frenzy, I began seriously pursuing a project that was sparked in me from a conversation I had in August. One of the counsellors that I had been working with at Crowsnest Lake Bible Camp approached me after one evening's campfire and asked me what prayer was & how it worked. As best as I could, I tried to give her an answer in what little time we had & with what little time I had to really consider the question. After stumbling through the "basics," I admitted that prayer was a really big and difficult topic to describe in the amount of time that we had. I promised her, though, that I would get her an answer sometime after the camp season was over, and, as the man of his word I am, I began looking into what the Bible had to say about prayer in September. Seeing as I wanted to give her a complete answer--not just a teaser--I decided to do my best at discovering all there was to prayer through a Biblical study. What I didn't expect, though, was in fact how much there was to know and learn. In my newly found free time, between applying for jobs, I found myself pouring over this project of prayer research & applying what I was discovering to my prayer life.

Reality Check?

That was when I began to worry. It was now 3 weeks since my last hour of employment, and I still had yet to find any gainful employment. I consulted God about this, and let him know my fears of not being able to pay either my rent or my bills. I wanted a job, and I wanted one right away, yet instead of giving me what I wanted, he told me to wait & to seek him.

WHAT?! That was my response. I mean, how in the world did he expect me to pay my bills or even get a job if I wasn't actively searching or trying to rectify the problem. He told me that He'd take care of it if I sought him first and foremost (actually, wholly was what he wanted) for the following ten days. I said "Deal."

Ten days went by, and there was no job waiting for me at the finish line. Nothing. Instead, during the week and a half stint of actively not pursuing employment, I had been a.) spending more time with God, and b.) spending a lot more time researching this prayer thing, coming to a point of actually starting to formally write a response (which now is turning into a book. As of this posting, I've only got 6700 words into the first chapter, which I think may be somewhere around the 10% mark). As a result, I've begun to feel a pressing drive to finish this work on prayer--but, writing a book doesn't pay the bills!

I verbalised this to God a few days ago, saying that he had promised me a job after the ten days. He said that he did no such thing. I said, "Oh yeah?!" and whipped out my prayer journal to go & prove God wrong. Hmm... Oops. Turned out that I was the one who had been wrong. What he promised was that he would take care of my financial situation. He didn't say how at the get go, but he made it awfully clear to me throughout the ten days.

My Nineveh

For the past two weeks, I have been spending a good portion of my time in the dining area of McDonald's reading, researching and writing. Every day I'm there, I see at least one person apply & also immediately get hired. Because of this, I knew that were I to apply, I would also get a job. But I didn't want to get a job at McDonald's. I didn't spend 5 years and get $40,000 in debt just to end up asking if you would like to super-size your drink and fries for 69 cents. The last thing I wanted to do was to reinforce the age-old BA grad stereotype, but even after the ten days of waiting were up, the dozen applications I sent out all fell on deaf ears. What's more depressing is that the two Tim Horton's by my house who advertise their extreme underemployment by asking patrons to be patient with what little employees they have would not even consider hiring me.

The Lord had been saying "Work at McDonald's" for about a week now, and I was saying, "Heck no." I was running from where God was calling me to work, for, y'see, if I were to work at McDonald's, I would still have the time and the energy to continue working on this prayer paper until it was completed. But I didn't want to work at McDonald's. So I gave God an ultimatum: "If you really want me to work there," I said yesterday, "then confirm it to me through someone else today."

I met up with one of my church's elders yesterday & we talked about ministry possibilities / getting me and my gifts involved with this new body that I was attending. During the chat, I had mentioned that I was considering applying at McDonald's. Now, instead of responding the way most people do by dismissing the possibility as being "beneath" me, he had mentioned that it would indeed present me with an opportunity to feed into other people's lives and both develop and shape people who may not have other sources of spiritual influence. What a really good point.

I applied to McDonald's today. I was literally shaking all over as I handed in my application. This was the second time in my life that I had done something God was calling me to do that I really, really didn't want to proceed in because of fearing the potential consequences. The first time, I was afraid that I would look like a fool & discredit God's name. This time, I was afraid that I was being a fool by passing up any other potential employment options (not that I've had any, mind you...). And what if I didn't get the job? What would I do then? Did that mean that God didn't come through for me? Was my faith in Christ all a big joke, or was I taking this concept of God actually being interested & involved in our daily lives far too seriously?

As I handed in my application, the assistant manager expressed incredible relief & joy, saying that that was the best news that he had heard all day. I've been scheduled for my hiring interview tomorrow at three.

Spewing From the Whale

Here I go, walking in humbleness before my God. I need to trust Him, and I need to remember that He chooses the foolish things of this world to shame the wise. I still can't really wrap my mind around it, but I'm called to work at McDonald's. How long? That's up to God. I'm done making decisions for myself: directing me is His job. I just need to follow.