In the Midst of Loss, I Will Praise Him

Every day when I turn on the news I see more bad economic news. More people losing their jobs, more unrest in the economy, more calls for a government that owns it all and runs it all. I don't know anyone who has not been touched by what is happening to some extent.

We have been through some very tough times over the past decade and I thought I might post about how to survive and glorify God even in the midst of job loss and financial devastation.

Several years ago, my husband followed some godly advice and took a break from his profession to do something entirely different. It paid substantially more money than what he was earning and it appeared irresponsible to do otherwise. His profession requires a 1month notice if you quit and by the time he got to the new job all the high paying positions were filled and he was given a job that paid about 9.00 per hour doing something he was not suited for at all. I had also left my job in the meantime for other reasons so suddenly we were a family of 5 with a mortgage, bills, and he made 9.00 per hour.

We also tried self-employment, starting a small freight transportation business. Things were going well and we just purchased a new and larger vehicle to enable us to make larger deliveries when 2 planes slammed into the World Trade Center and everything screeched to a halt- including our business. There was a slow and painful end to that.

I also had a small business with a friend and our one and only client was through our efforts as his contracted employee, revealed to be a thief. That was the end of that!

Another incidence; my husband accepted a position at a well established company and put in his 1 month notice at his job. When he arrived at his new job he worked for one week before being laid off. Turned out he and a few others were hired just to please the regulators who were coming in to inspect things. They could not pay the people, and they knew it when they hired them!

And finally, he had the best job to that date and was let go the day before Thanksgiving because he was more interested in ethics and treating the clients properly than the people who owned the clinic. He was told that he "was not a good fit." All this happened in a span of about 7 years.

Wow. Even recounting all those events makes me shake inside! I did not always understand what was happening in these circumstances and it seemed that each thing was worse than the one before. There were times I thought that I would not survive those times, and when I look back on them I don't know how we did it. We always had food, always paid our bills, were never in danger of losing our house or anything.

Over the next few days, I am going to share with you some of my thoughts from my journal archives and how I dealt with these tough circumstances. My hope and prayer is that these will minister to those of you in the depths of some dark times.

Labels: