“Today, I didn’t get picked…”
I wrote that line, on this blog, January 24th, at 8:48 a.m. That was the last I updated it because I was also, already, busy working on not getting picked by another organization that I was super excited about.
I have affectionately labeled the months that followed my “season of rejection”…
So, I continued to write just a couple more posts as I went along, and then clearly fizzled on writing here.
The next “not getting picked” chain of events turned out to be one of the worst professional experiences of my life so far.
Note: “professional” experience, because I don’t want to sound too dramatic here – it wasn’t one of my worst in all of life, just “professional” life.
I wrote about it on my “personfessional” blog in a somewhat veiled yet very thorough way because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to call them out by name and pick an internet fight and/or look like I’m being a baby just cause they ended up being a bunch of jerks, but I still wanted the therapy of getting it all “out”.
They didn’t start as jerks, but after I got handed off from the top leadership to passing the phase of being approved by the next level leadership – things went south fast!
Though the way I was treated was offensive and rude, it wasn’t anything I couldn’t eventually shrug off, and I knew that from the moment the verdict came… in all it’s passive aggressiveness and uncaring disregard.
Yet, though you still know you’ll laugh about it later, trust God in the meantime, and be perfectly content in the long run. It can sure take some wind out of your sails to not get picked.
It can even feel a bit like a tear in the sails when they don’t pick you and they’re rude and uncaring about it – especially when you were wildly excited about what they were doing as an organization.
And so that, along with the fact that I wanted to focus on learning some new skills and developing my community blog (TheMajestysMen.com), piled up to mean I’ve neglected writing here.
“Here” is the place where I write about things like being rejected in the marketplace, and working on new skills, and my processing of where I fit in to things and what God is doing.
But rejection does that to people… It’s never fun and it gets us all confused as to what we’re supposed to be focusing on and maybe even who we are supposed to be. Again, it does this even more when we are or were super excited about or interested in that which we were rejected from being a part of.
To make it worse, people always try to say things like, “Well you know that just means God didn’t want you there” or “God has better plans for you in store then.” and if you think about it, those are really weird things to say to a person?
Can you really know that God was super concerned with whether or not we took on a different job for earning income? Do you really think he would have been upset with us for moving if we needed to? You think he had a set plan that we were about to thwart?
Maybe. But, maybe not.
It almost seems arrogant to me to think that God was orchestrating all these tiny little details (such as causing one of the hiring people to be having a really bad week, and then them to get in a new recruiter the same week) in order to keep us from getting a job.
Again, maybe, but maybe not.
I think the greatest thing to remember is that God is sovereign, no doubt, and that because of this there are literally countless different factors going into every little word spoken, decision made, opportunity provided or prevented, and so on.
It may have absolutely nothing to do with me at all!
Well, obviously, it does – but not in the way that you or I might be tempted to think. As in, God will no doubt cause all things to work together for the good of us who are following him (as he would have done here or there), but maybe I didn’t get picked because he was currently working out some 287 other scenarios where other people needed to learn some lessons, get blessed, develop their character, lose jobs, get jobs, and so on.
The best thing to do is simply realize that we cannot hope to understand why things like “why didn’t I get a job” and so many other multi-faceted situations go down the way they do.
Typically, our hopes and attempts at understanding our life are more out of pride and an idolization of comfort and control than a simple exercise of the mind.
The most important thing is know God is going to take care of me (and you) because he is good and caring, and I am going to be content because I find my greatest joy in knowing God and being known by him, secure in his eternal goodness towards me, and not in any job, title, salary, or dreamt up future.
Aaaand I’m back to blogging here, after 9 months of silence and alternate focuses… much to come! 🙂
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