OK. I’ll be good. I’ll go ahead and announce that I do indeed have a job. I’m sure a great number of you have listened to the rumors instead of waiting for the press release, but fortunately, in this case, the rumors were mostly true. I’ll start working for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association tomorrow. 8:00 am. Show up early and we’ll walk you over to devotions. Does this mean I’m getting paid to pray? It’s a possibility.
What I’m going to be doing is basically working in a call center for BGEA. Mostly, I think, it’s going to be updating addresses and accepting donations, and setting people up to receive the magazine. But there is supposed to be a bit of praying for people over the phone, leading them in sinner’s prayers, etc. The pay is very reasonable, at a rate to which I formerly referred as measly. But the hours are fewer. It’s officially part-time: between 20 and 30 hours a week, depending on the schedule you get. The manager, when I spoke to him, said that some shifts may be as great as 34 hours or as small as 16. If I get anywhere near 16, I’m going to have to take up a paper route or something, but that’s okay. I made a commitment for a year, and that’s just a little bit under how much longer I plan to stay in Charlotte. What a coinkydink.
Valerie is much more excited about this than me. My joblessness seems to have been really freaking her out. I haven’t been quite so worried. I have this amazing ability to put off fear of my life falling apart, so long as I know I’ve been doing what’s right. So as long as I was looking regularly, and keeping disciplined and busy, I was fine. It was only when I managed to goof off for a day that I got really weirded out. So far as actually getting a job, I knew that was going to happen, because God is gracious.
That’s not to say that I wasn’t very frustrated. I discovered a lot about myself that I didn’t suspect. Like the fact that I had very little self-discipline, especially where it concerns creating and sticking to my own schedule. It was very easy to goof off a whole day. Which then did make me very depressed. But then, my depression was at least partially justified because I had, in fact, made a fool of myself and wasted a day.
So what really got my attention was not that I got a job, but under what circumstances I got a job. It was the first day after I had finally decided to get out the daily planner my parents had given me 6 (count ‘em: 6) years ago and start using it. Monday was the first day that I wrote down for me an agenda, and then followed through with it. Monday was also the day that I finally gave in and followed through with filing for unemployment.
The unemployment thing wouldn’t really be a big deal, except I’m trying to teach this Sunday school. I was trying to find some way to demonstrate for them that God is really involved in our lives, and the official lesson for that day was on prayer. And the official verse was in Ezra 8:21 where Ezra announced that he specifically didn’t request an armed guard from the emperor while his people went across hostile territory back to Jerusalem. Ezra had every right to an armed guard, and he would have gotten it if he had asked for it. But Ezra had told the emperor that God watches out for the people who look to him. So he was ashamed to say, “God will protect us—can we have an armed guard?” And I said to myself. You’re not supposed to do that. That’s like those people who say that God will heal them, so they don’t go to the doctor. You’re supposed to do both. That’d be like me being fully entitled to unemployment insurance (which I am) but insisting instead upon trusting in God to keep me fed.
Now all of this would be fine, but I was trying to demonstrate to these kids that God is real and really watching out for us, just like Ezra was trying to demonstrate for the Persian king. So I announced, with only a little faith, that I was going to put off applying for unemployment until I got down to my last dregs, so I could demonstrate that God would provide. Notice I didn’t say that I wouldn’t apply for unemployment. Just not until the last minute. I wanted to see if God would provide. And I really wanted to demonstrate that God would provide.
Of course, it would be the easiest thing in the world to demonstrate that me getting a job was no miracle. I happen to consider myself one of the most employable people in the world J. But the same could be said for Ezra, that it was no miracle that he got across the entire middle east without being attacked. Maybe his group just wasn’t worth the effort, they were so poor. But it is interesting to note that I got my job offer the very day I applied for unemployment online and set a date to go down to the main office. Which would be today. Which I may still do, on the basis that I might still be entitled to the money I would have received the last 6 weeks or so.
Since I had finally gotten my life organized, yesterday was also the day that I finally did my taxes and discovered that I was due nearly $600. THAT I did on purpose. I’ve heard a lot of arguments on why you should go through this great effort to make sure that you don’t owe them and they don’t owe you. Usually the argument goes that going out of your way to make sure that you get a tax refund is basically using the government for a savings account, and they make an awful bank because they only charge interest, and never pay it. BUT. If I could ensure that over a period of 12 months I would actually save that money in a bank, I wouldn’t want to pay it out in taxes. But I know me. I’m a good saver, but not that good of a saver. There is no way I would have put that additional money in a bank. It would have gone straight into something really frivolous, like an extra bag of fritos on the way out of the grocery store… every week for a year. And even if I had invested it in a savings account somewhere. What kind of return does a bank give you? .05% ? Not much of a difference from nothing, is it? As it is, I now have $600 that I will plop down right back into savings—despite this sudden need I have to upgrade my car stereo.
And lastly. When it rains it pours. I got home last night from all my errand running, and checked my email, and found a note from a recruiter at American Express Financial Securities. They wanted to schedule an interview with me. All of this on the same day. It feels very weird to go from no interviews at all, to turning down an interview. The really weird part is that the American Express job (in the event that I actually got it) would probably have paid better. But. A bird in hand…
As always,
I have more to say,
but I’ve done enough
for today.
neumatikos 