Considering the Waiting, Part 1

Tom Petty was more right than he ever knew- the waiting is the hardest part. By the time we got to our second adoption process you’d think CavWife and I would have had Ph.D.s in waiting. After all, both of us had spent most of our adult lives, then over 20 years, waiting for one thing or another.

We both waited vocationally. CavWife wanted to be a teacher, in a Christian school: a particular Christian school (mine is not to wonder why). After graduating with her degree in Elementary Education, she waited. No, she didn’t sit in a room by the phone waiting for them to call until she was covered in dust and cobwebs. She ended up working at the Bible Institute she had attended for 2 years. But her eye was always on that Christian school. For 8 years she waited, hoping, enduring long Adirondack winters.

She’d given up- the demanding anyway.  She still had the desire, but she was no longer demanding God do this for her.  She was amazed when they called. Oddly, it was difficult for her to leave upstate NY and her dearest friends that she met during that period of life.

I left the small city I grew up in just before I turned 25. I was going to seminary: over 1,000 miles away. I was escaping the cold, and a series of relational disappointments. Seminary wasn’t my plan even though it was The Plan. I thought God was crazy, but one day He turned the light bulb on and The Plan was suddenly sweet. So I wasn’t just running from things, I was also running to something. But my plan was to return to New England when I was done. Little did I know that I’d be stuck in Florida for the next 19 years. Sometimes the wait is how we move from our plan to His plan; it is a slow course correction. Our hearts need time to transition from our plan to His.

Read Full Post »

Considering a Job Search

It has been a topsy-turvy week for the Cavman.  I thought I was quite close to a new position, and it ended up not happening.  So while trying to regroup I also have to rev up a job search.

This brings up some big questions for me.  Do I just “buy time” with a job that pays the bills while continuing to look for a church position that may never materialize (oh me of little faith)?  Do I shoot for something along a career path since that church position may not materialize in the reasonably near future?

I know of one guy who couldn’t find a church position and ended up at Frito Lay and relocated north.  One day a guy knocked on his door asking if he was a pastor.  “Yeah, I was.”  He wanted him to do pulpit supply for their church.  “Sure, but I’m going to shoot straight with what the Bible teaches.”  Sure.  Before he knew it, he was their pastor and they slowly became Reformed in their theological outlook.  So, stuff happens.

The future is unknown to me.  Thankfully the god of open theism doesn’t exist, so God knows what he’s going to do with me.  I don’t know and feel quite powerless at this time.  I feel like I’m dangling over a precipice.

The last time I was in this precarious position, I was single.  Now there are a wife and 2 kids to consider and care for.  That really ups the ante, if you know what I mean.

It is difficult to figure out what to do precisely because I have this sense of calling to ministry (which has been affirmed by many).  I know it isn’t rational, or make any sense, but I feel like I’m betraying God by pursuing what could be a career position.  No one said we always make sense.  But these are the inner gyroscopes that keep on course, or discombobulate us at times.  I need time, which I don’t have, to sit and think and pray.

I know God will provide, but what will He provide?  A last second call to a church that fits fairly well?  A new career that provides well for my family?  A just-get-by job to tied me over until ….?  A friend told me to think like the Israelites in Judah- settle in for the long haul rather than put life on hold.

Read Full Post »