My story begins a month ago. I was on my way home from work. I was sitting in my car and had been talking to God. "God I'm not really happy where I'm at right now. I love the place that I work and the people I work with but I'm not happy with what I do." I felt that I needed more challenge.
My job responsibilities were fairly light. I was the administrative assistant to one of the pastors at Saddleback Church. I had started working on the Missions Team of the church more than a year ago, becaues I had been excited about being part of a revolutionary plan to mobilize millions of Christians to do the Great Commission. I did office work: filing, organizing, some basic accounting stuff but I felt like I needed more.
As I sat there I soon became a little worried. I had been in this situation before two years ago only I was working in a different place. Seeing that my circumstances were the same as before I began to ask myself, "Is my life really going anywhere? Why do I keep on running into these situations where I get into a dead-end job?"
"What do I do God?" I asked. "Should I quit my job and look for something else or do you have something for me where I'm working at and I just don't know it?" God spoke to me after I was finished. He said very simply, "I'm not going to give you my answer now but you need to wait for my answer." Great, well everyone who has ever waited on God for an answer to prayer knows that God's timing could mean weeks or even months and years down the road but I had been in that place a couple of times so I wasn't really expecting God's answer to come a week later.
I remembered how I felt when I first heard about the lay-off. I was sitting, listening to my boss, Skip, as he explained to our team at our last lunch together that there were certain changes coming to the Missions Team at Saddleback Church and there would be lay-offs. Skip couldn't tell us how many people or who exactly it would be let go but as he spoke I had the feeling, the kind of nervous anticipation one feels before you get on a roller-coaster. You sit down and then the protective harness comes down. You know its going to be fun but you can't help be a little scared. I realized then before I was actually let go that I wanted I truly wanted to be laid-off. I wanted to leave. It would have meant a fresh start in something new. "It could mean anything," I thought and I began imagining the possibilities. "Was this how God was answering my prayer?"
And then I walked into the office after our meeting. Some of us were still clinging to hope that the changes to our team wouldn't be so radical. We sat at our desks still trying to laugh and joke our way out of our nervousness. We were all expecting to hear the news of who was laid off the following day but one by one they called us into a separate office not two hours after we had come back from lunch. My friend Courtney was first and then James and finally they called me in and it was done. My last day would be Friday.
