On August 28th, my wife lost her job. 24 hours later, I lost mine. This blog is a continuation of the day-by-day chronicling of our emotional journey back to employment. This is bound to be upsetting, hilarious and hopeful.
Monday – October 6, 2014
I finally figured out I lost one of my very good friends after he unfriended me on Facebook. I pleaded with him to tell me what I had done or how I had offended him, just so I could apologize. I can’t imagine what I’ve done–I’ve thought and thought and thought about it and I can’t come up with anything–but I’m willing to entertain the possibility that I’ve done something. He is silent. He will not return my calls or my emails. One day he was my friend, now he is not. And I don’t know why.
Today, he sent me a brief, factual email on a particular point having nothing to do with our friendship. There were no details, no explanations. I have lost a friend. And I don’t know why.
Additionally:
One of Erin’s opportunities, the one that looked the most promising, may have in fact been a scam. She can only get a voice mail when she calls the place, no matter the time of day. They’ve vanished. She did some research only to find that the circumstances surrounding her interview mirror some hiring scams other “businesses” have pulled. It’s a discouraging thing to be jerked around like that. We really had a lot of hope for this one. And we still don’t know how her San Francisco audition went.
All of this is probably why I felt so raw today, and I should have known better than to try to engage with people.
I got uncharacteristically tired of people’s advice and was probably more impatient on Facebook than I should have been. This is stupid because we all know Facebook is laced with an addictive chemical that spurs aggression (they’ve tested monkeys on this) and I know by sharing my garbage in this blog that I’m inviting people to give advice on how to clean it up–and usually I’m way cool with that–but today I just had my fill of all of it.
All that said, I still ill-advisedly offer the following by way of your enlightenment as to just what the heck I’m talking about:
The Facebook conversation had a lot to do with how I interact with God. People were imploring me to temper my expectations of answers to prayer. They told me to not necessarily anticipate an answer, that when it comes down to it I may just have to make a decision about where to work and where to live. Jobs come and go anyway, so it may not even be that important. They were speaking from their own experiences and I respect that, but I just can’t pray like that.
I can’t pray thinking the answer may or may not come. I know that’s sometimes the case–sometimes God’s silence is what we need, but to actively engage with that possibility WHILE praying and trying to utilize my faith, no, I can’t do that. I believe God is compelled by faith. I believe–and have seen–that when faith is sufficient he cannot hold back from revealing Himself.
Now, that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to submit to silence. I’m willing to submit to whatever I need to in order to endure properly this trial of unemployment, but I also know my past experiences in seeking answer to prayer. I know how God communicates with me, and I will put my faith towards a definitive answer. I can’t muster up faith for anything else.
There’s a story in the Book of Mormon of a young prophet, Nephi, whose brothers bound him with cords (his brothers were jerks). Nephi prayed to God that he could “burst” the cords and assert proper control of the situation, but instead God made the cords loose and they fell off instead. That was fine. It got the job done, but it’s clear Nephi had the faith to break the cords. The Lord simply went a different, less demonstrative way.
If God needs to do the same to me, I will submit, but meanwhile I wanna burst me some cords.
After a day like today, I wanna burst a whole bunch of cords.
Brock Heasley 