I am pondering the situation in which I find myself  and wonder, am I practicing patience and long-suffering? Or am I just postponing the decision to go all out in what I believe God wants me to do. There are seasons in our journey, to be sure, but I am realizing how it will take some discernment to give up the safety of a paycheck to return to my certain faith that God will provide all that I need if I am doing what He wants me to do.

I think perhaps He knew I needed to see the value of that which He has put on my heart, but also to see the value of how He sees me. In a place where my strengths are really under utilized and almost become weaknesses, I am learning that there is a place where I am able to do much more than just live through the day.

I have always been available to be an advocate, an encourager to those who were getting weary. I now see Him sending the same kind of missionaries into my life to encourage me. There is a “job” that needs doing and sometimes when you feel you have no job you are doing perhaps the most important one of all.

I was speaking to a wife and mother today who also spends a great deal of time taking care of her aging parents and I told her, as I had told another friend just last week, that God has to have some missionaries that don’t have daily 9-5  jobs… so that they can be available to show up when everyone else is at work or so tired after work they can’t drag themselves out of the house. Most of us at work can’t even answer our phones  if we were to get a call, so our timetable means that others have to put their needs on hold.

This made me think that  I may be trying to operate on my own timetable and not on God’s. I believe when I am in sync with God’s plan for my life, it doesn’t feel sad when I wake up and go to work nor do I feel sad at the end of the day when I come home. While I often had bills I couldn’t pay on time and didn’t know where my next paycheck was coming from or when, I had joy in my life every day from the places God sent me and the people with whom  He connected me.

I miss that sense of doing daily what He instructed and being led by His spirit. I feel like when I check into work I check out of His plan for that length of time. At the end of the day I feel exhausted and sad. I have never felt that way in the past thirty years, even though I have been stressed by lots of circumstances, I have had such strong faith that God was in control. It is giving me strength to reexamine my circumstances, and come up with the courage to leave the safe for the uncertain, and once again be working with God.

I have, at the very least, more awareness of why it is so difficult for many to leave the certainty of a paycheck, no matter how much they may not like their job. I am grateful, however, that I learned to lean on God for provision a long time before I saw the temptation of leaning on a paycheck.

I have recently, thanks to the economy downturn and the real estate quandary in particular, taken a job in corporate America. I have to say….. I must have been living in a bubble for the last twenty five years!

Running my own businesses, and taking total responsibility for the outcome and the income (or lack of it!) I must say was a lot easier and more satisfying than trying to work ethically in an environment where so many no longer feel any personal responsibility for their day’s paycheck.

Maybe I have just been blessed by the employees I have been proud to work with,  delegate to and promote. Perhaps I am “just lucky”. Or  possibly the values I held myself to  also attracted the type of employee who felt the same.  All I know is I looked forward to every day of work I was privileged to have, and never went home with the sadness or started my day as close to tears as I have recently.

I am determined to do the best I can, even within the confines of having very little input into the solutions to the problems. I know that God provided this income and therefore has a purpose for me there. As with so many things, I may not realize it until long after, when the reasons are revealed. I do know that as always, I trust His map for my life, and will continue to try to stay on track. All I know is, sometimes I feel like my GPS has picked up a wrong signal and sent me way off course….like I am on a dirt road when I should be on a highway! The driving is a bit more precarious and I just have to slow down and proceed with caution, and prayer.