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.