"Where would you rather be?"

I had an interesting conversation with one of my pastors today. He had just preached a great sermon on - well, I’m no good at recapping sermons. Something about Sarah and Abraham’s reaction to God telling them that they would have a baby boy within a year, about Sarah laughing, about hope, about not giving up on what God has called you too, even when it seems impossible.

So I was walking outside after the service when this pastor, who really didn’t know much about our circumstances, asked me how we were doing. I fell apart. I confessed that I am at such a loss as to what our, and specifically my, next step should be. I am afraid of being unwise, afraid of waiting so long for what we think would be the right thing for us, that we become impoverished. God has provided for us, just what we needed as we needed it, since my husband’s first lay-off 3 1/2 years ago. But…

My fear is that we are ignoring signs that we need to acknowledge – maybe that my husband’s career will never be the same, maybe that we need to look for new ways of moving forward. I’m partially afraid that I’m shirking my duty, that I should be willing to try to resurrect my old career, share this pain of finding a way to provide for our family. I’d been considering trying to take some night classes to bring myself a little more technologically back up-to-date. I just don’t know what I should do...

My pastor looked at me, and asked a question that came to him then, that he said he had never really asked anyone before. “If everything did fall apart in your life – if you were to loose everything – where would you rather be when that happened?” I looked at him, and out of my mouth came the words “I’d rather be with my children, than sitting in some corporate office!” He responded with “Because that’s your calling.” (and that’s not a “pat answer” line for him, I think – I don’t know him that well, but I don’t think he’s an “anti-women-working”, old-school kinda guy). He went on to promise to pray for us, commiserated with my husband about how awful the “job search process” as our society tells us it should be done is, and encouraged my husband to come in and visit him.

I am very encouraged. Still struggling with fear. Still unsure about whether I ought to be working on updating my technical skills (my plan was to shift my expertise towards work that might more commonly be offered as part-time contracts, rather than a full-track software engineering career). But I am hopeful. My dream really is to be home with my children, and to work on the jewelry business – and being here for my children while they grow up is the highest priority. I miss some of the software stuff, too, and some of the feedback that comes with a career (that paycheck was pretty nice, that’s for sure!), but for now, this is my life.

Interestingly, this afternoon my husband told me about an email he had received from a corporate recruiter who had seen my husband’s resume online and who had asked my husband to send him some more info. That’s one of the first positive potential-lead type interactions my husband has had in a while. We’re not getting our hopes up too high about this early stage of a specific conversation, but the timing was very encouraging. We are more hopeful.