B-log

Read parts 1, 2, 3

It’s been a while since I’ve written those three previous parts of this revisiting of the past season of my life. The truth is, I pushed pause on the series because of two reasons:

1. I have entered into the next season that followed this season. The onset of a new season has required most of my time and nearly all my attention. And as important as it is for me (and hopefully for others reading this) to look back, I did not want to rob myself and my family of being fully engaged in the moment of the new season.
2. When I originally wrote the first three parts, I thought that part 4 would be the final contribution. I paused to think through things to make sure I wasn’t repeating myself or blathering on like a Capuchin with a keyboard….kind of like I’m doing right now.

Back to the story…

In the earlier parts, I explained going through denial and anger and bargaining and depression. I talked about how its all cyclical and messy and churning and frustratingly nonproductive…much like being Mike Rowe’s washing machine. That’s a Dirty Jobs reference for all you Discovery Channel non-watchers out there.

Ultimately, where I settled out in this process is acceptance. Eventually, all my denial wilted in the face of the reality that I was jobless. Over time, the anger and the sadness withered in my spirit. They didn’t go away…they just left a dry, dead stem of bitterness that had to be dealt with. Finally, I realized that only response I was hearing to my cries of bargaining were the echoes of my own pleas in the empty silence of my own ears. 

So I came to accept my situation. It turned out to be the longest stage of my unemployment, and the stage in which the other stages attempted to resurface - sometimes successfully, sometimes not.

Classically, what “acceptance” means is “coming to terms with it.” It doesn’t mean that I liked it. Or that I understood it. Or that I didn’t want to be done with it immediately. It just meant that I came to a point where I said, “Okay. This is the reality. I’m not there any more. God’s plan is different than my plan, and it’s time I adjusted because he’s not going to.”

Here’s the sneaky truth about acceptance, particularly related to unemployment: It’s not the individual’s “coming to terms” with it that is so tough. It’s dealing with everybody else’s sideline quarterbacking that makes it difficult. I’ve talked with so many people who have been unemployed because of no fault of their own, and the sad, resounding chorus is that their unemployment gets harder to deal with the longer it lingers because of the lack of compassion, lack of understanding, lack of patience of the other people in their life whose opinions and estimations matter greatly to the person who is without a job.

Fortunately and thankfully, I had a supporting family (immediate and extended) who was gentle with me and let me go through my stages. My wife and kids were remarkably encouraging and supportive. My dad and my brother were never critical and consistently expressed confidence in me. My in-laws (parents and siblings) were loving, kind, and incredible. They were all pillowy buffers who never entitled me to have bad behavior, but responded to me in such a way that I was able to stand back up after the fall and more quickly recover from the adversity.

That’s not the way it goes with a lot of people, and I recognize that. I really only dealt with bad responses from a few “church people.” People who couldn’t believe that I was not quickly in a new church. People who seemed to be offended that we couldn’t/didn’t go back to the church that had laid me off. People who expressed incredulity that if I wasn’t going to serve in a church, then why wasn’t I at least stocking shelves at WalMart (no offense to any WalMart stockers reading today). 

And at the risk of rambling, let me just address these uninformed opinions as gently as I know how:

1. Ministry is a flooded job market, and hard to get a place to serve. I read at one point that there are more than 50,000 unemployed ministers in America right now. I was “one of hundreds” of candidates for several of the positions I “almost got.” Combine these “long odds” with the strong sense that we are actually called or led to a specific opportunity and are not just “looking for work,” makes it tougher than the proverbial needle/haystack relationship.
2. While we were hurt by what happened at the church, we didn’t go back specifically because we love the church and care for its ministry. We’ve been able to explain that to a few people, but this is my “public declaration” of rationale. After being laid off, our continued presence there would have been a distraction to the ongoing work there. It was so very very tough to lose our church at the same time we lost my job…but for the sake of the church that we stayed away. We know that some people won’t appreciate that, but they’re not reading my blog anyway.
3. Working in the secular market - believe me, I tried. The tough thing about ministry is that most secular HR heads won’t give ministers a second look. There is a perception that the minister is pining away the hours of the week with a blue-haired receptionist as he recycles old sermons that he stole from the Internet. The truth is, a good minister is qualified by ministry to work anywhere. He leads people, he overcomes adversity, he solves problems, he thinks creatively, he builds teams, he resolves conflict, he speaks in groups of all sizes, and most of all…he get results. But most ministers looking for work in the marketplace never get the chance to even make their case for getting a shot at the job. And on the other side…most labor jobs won’t hire a minister because they recognize that they are over-qualified and are not long-term hires. I have a pastor/friend who saw one company hire illegal citizens over him expressly because of those reasons.

So this is all wrapped up in “acceptance.”

What acceptance isn’t is “being okay with it.”  And by God’s grace, I recognized the most dangerous snare I could ever step into in my unemployment was “being okay with it.”  

Consequently, while I had to accept the reality of being unemployed, I immediately went to work trying to get un-unemployed. I was laid off April 19, 2010. I took a couple days to wallow, and then I got to work trying to get to work. I had my resume’ out and being delivered by April 27. By the time my season came to a close, I had 417 emails representing more than 200 ministry opportunities explored. I never kept track of the rejections or the non-responses. There were six opportunities that we explored deeply. Two were local to Texas. One was in the East, two were in the Midwest, and one (or what we fondly refer to as “The One”) was in the Southwest.

In my previous post, I compared acceptance as “placid waters.” That’s probably a relative statement. It was placid compared to the tumult of the earlier stages I went through. But even in accepting things as they were, there was always the ongoing sense that I was in dangerous waters. We had virtually no answers. We went through our entire retirement. We were looking at the real possibility of losing our home and destroying our credit. We cut out so many “luxuries,” that beforehand we had never even given a second thought. We might have been in placid waters, but there was a pretty consistent feeling that we were going to need a bigger boat to deal with the shark swimming around us.

The truth is, we have only felt “safe” now that we are on the shore, having finally closed the door to this long season of unemployment and started a new ministry filled with hope and opportunity. We still have our “sea legs” from time to time, but we’re moving forward and looking ahead. Coming up - the conclusion, where I’ll share my final thoughts, last observations, and remaining insights. Thanks for sticking it out with me and I hope you’ll take the time to read the last part…it really is the most important.