Careers

I made a career change a little over a year ago. 

For nearly ten years, I had been working in quality control (mostly automotive). It was an awful job, but it paid well enough that it acted as the proverbial "golden handcuffs." Honestly, I felt like I was doomed to spend the rest of my working life on factory floors, sweating my balls off, and babysitting supposed adults. 

Honestly, there's a big part of me that wants to go on a long rant about everything that was terrible about that job, but if I let myself take the long view, I have a lot for which I should be grateful.

In spring of 2011, I badly needed a job. A staffing agency sent me out to a company I'd never heard of in a factory I'd never heard of to do a job I never knew existed: third party quality inspection. The agency told me it would be a month long project and then I could come back to them for something else. A month turned into two months, turned into four months. The company reduced staffing from 50 people to five people. But they kept me around. I hated every minute of it. The people were awful. It was hotter than Hades. I got pneumonia at one point. I hurt my foot and could barely walk. But by the grace of God, they kept asking me to show up, and then they offered me a full-time leadership job. 

Honestly, I hated nearly every minute of the next 9 1/2 years of employment. If ever a job illustrated how badly I suck at loving my neighbor, it was this one. But they paid enough that in combination with Anna's job, we were able to buy a great house. And we've been fortunate to never feel like we were living paycheck to paycheck ever since.

I started looking for another job in 2016. It had become abundantly clear that no matter how high up the corporate ladder I were to climb, I would never be anything but miserable in that company. But they paid me money. They paid me enough money that I couldn't just leave without expecting to take a drastic pay cut. 

I had a handful of interviews over the next few years, but the guiding hand of Providence directed my path away from each of those positions. And in retrospect, I am grateful that it did. Whether I was under or over-qualified, too jaded, or derailed by a global pandemic, I am undoubtedly better off now than I had I ended up at any of those other jobs. "Here I raise my Ebenezer. Hither, by thy help I've come."

God's mercy and grace don't always play out like this though. In the big picture, 10 years is nothing to the 70 years Israel was in Babylon or the 400 years they were in Egypt. They were slaves. Entire generations came and went. I just didn't like my job. 

But God still saw fit to open a path that took me out of manufacturing quality and into marketing, of all things. No longer did I have to look at my English degree as a worthless piece of paper in an industry where the English language is abused like a rental care when you pay for the extra insurance. Now, that overly expensive degree was an asset. I was writing copy and commercial scripts. I was editing. Precise language mattered again. 

Most importantly, this job gives me time with my family. It doesn't interrupt me when I'm not in the office. I get to leave and not think about it. 

Every other job I thought I wanted would have been more about escaping the job I already had, but I would have still been in the same basic industry, dealing with the same kinds of things. I'm reminded of a quote from Tim Keller: "God will either give us what we ask for in prayer or give us what we would have asked for if we knew everything he knows." I didn't know this was the job I wanted. But God knew.

There Once Was a Blog

 I randomly thought about this blog today and wondered if I could still access it. Turns out it's tied to Google, so I didn't even have to remember a password.

It looks like it's been 9 years since I posted something here. Per my last post (May of 2013), I was going to post again in a year. Whoops.

9 years seems both so long and so short. A lot has changed. Very little has stayed the same. The song comes to mind, "on Christ the solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand." 

In May 2013, I was thinking about a truck. I'd like to go back in time and tell my younger self that in a few short months, he would have his truck, and it will serve him well (just be more careful when you're backing up in the Toyota parking lot). 

In 2022, I'm still thinking about new trucks, but there are other concerns too. 

In the intervening years, life has marched its inexorable march. The stories that could have been recorded here are legion. 

• 5 years of marriage has become 14 
• a kid has made her maniacal appearance 
• grandparents have passed
• a brother has died
• health concerns have proven to be nothing
• and heath concerns have turned out to be devastating
• nieces and nephews have been born
• dogs and cats have come and gone
• homes have been bought and sold
• total career changes have been made
• churches have been joined and left
• friendships have been made and abandoned
• deer hunting has resumed
• storms literal and figurative have come and gone

One of the things most unsettling to me about death is the idea that all the memories unique to that person, all the experiences they had that no one else can ever see, are gone. 

I think about that with my brother. His death is the most recent and unmooring of the list above. I haven't talked about my feelings with anyone but Anna. 

I haven't wanted to say the word suicide. But it's not a secret. My parents very intentionally didn't disguise it in his obituary, and the pastor spoke about Christopher's mental illness at the funeral.

I haven't wanted to think about it too much at all for many reasons but especially because when I do, I start wondering about things to which I will never have an answer. I know he was homeless. I don't know why. I don't know how long (best guess is at least three years). We had no idea until after he died. He hid that from us. He must have hidden a lot of things. And all the answers have died with him. There was no note. 

We can point to his "mental illness" as the cause for all of this, but we'll never know the full reality of that. 

Is it possible to think about a preventable, untimely death, and not play the "what if" game? I have to fight to not go down that rabbit hole. But his death feels as though it was extra avoidable. He was a phone call away from help, and he couldn't bring himself to ask. All he had to do was call. 

The night I found out, I hung up the phone with my parents and forced myself to sing the Doxology. Of course I didn't feel like singing, but I knew that if there was any sense to be made in any of this life, it has to come in the knowledge that there is a king and He is on the throne.