Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Weakness is to Strength as Summer is to Unemployed

Hello again

Okay, so it’s been a while, a long, long while. I apologize for that.

Anyway here’s a quick recap of the past three months or so since my last post.

May—I graduated from SMU without a job off or even any sort of job prospects, and because I didn’t have a job my only option was to move back home. Ah Corpus Christi, such a fun city… (Anyone who has visited Corpus will know that I am being my usual sarcastic self right there) Living at home with my mom was nice, and it had its perks, free rent, home cooked meals, and cable television. Over the past two months I watch lots and lots of cable television. I got myself engulfed in Deadliest Catch, every original show on the History Channel (including a show about Alaskan Taxidermists called “Mounted in Alaska”), plenty of crime shows and lately I’ve been hooked on the 24 hour marathons of Jersey Shore. (I’m not too proud of that last one. I filled out so many applications that my email inbox would be full each day with confirmation emails and rejection emails. Eventually, May spilled into June, and the summer of unemployment dragged on

June – I received a tip that a geotech contractor was hiring civil engineers to be site inspectors, and after calling the company up, they invited me to come up to Denton for an interview. In preparing for the interview all signs seemed to point to this being the perfect job for me, but as I departed Dallas to head back to Corpus following the interview, I couldn’t shake the gut feeling that this wasn’t the job for me. A week later I received phone calls from two different Dallas firms asking me to interview with them!

I was excited, because both of these jobs seemed pretty good. One was a job working on a waste water team designing pumps and pipe specifications. The people there were great; I even had the surprisingly awkward experience of being interviewed by a friend. The downside was that I really didn’t want to work in water that much, but a job was a job, and in this market I wasn’t about to turn them away. The other company was a geotech firm and I would be a field engineer taking soil samples from the site and bringing them into the lab for tests. The job sounded fun and several of my classes had unknowingly prepared me for this job, but the pay was nowhere near what I was expecting. I left expecting to hear back soon, but I’d be waiting a while and so June turned into July.

July – Not much to say, except for I was impatiently waiting to hear from both companies. After checking in with them multiple times, they were always in the “decision” phase, but could never tell me an answer nor give me some sort of a time table. All the while I sat around feeling like a fool and a failure because here I was a college graduate with no job, and therefore no foreseeable future. Finally over a month after the interview, the geotech firm made me an offer, and so now it’s August and I am making preparations to move back to Dallas and begin work. Hooray!

Now that you’re all caught up, I can get to the real reason while I decided to come back to my blog. I had initial thought I could be serving in Costa Rica, but God had other plans for me. Now I guess he wants me back in the Metroplex, which is fine by me.

Anywho, it’s time to get to the meat and potatoes of the post I guess. This summer has been extremely hard for me. I have spent the time away from my entire support system, and while we have facebook and cell phones, there’s no replacement for a face to face conversation and a good old fashioned hug. It really hurt that my dad couldn’t be at my graduation. I hope that he is proud of me, but standing around seeing everyone with their families just made the pain resonate to a deeper level. Then the fact that I know he loves me and is proud of me just drove me into a deeper depression while I struggled to find a job. (It sucks when your occupation is infrastructure, and the government decides to cut spending on new infrastructure)

It hit me just about an hour ago while I was re-reading a section of Craig Groeschel’s book, Weird, some of you may know his other book, The Christian Atheist. In this portion he was talking about a promise from God that we needed to claim. The scripture that he cited knock me back.

“’My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” 2 Corinthians 12:9

Those of you who know me well know that one of my biggest struggles is my lack of self-confidence. It is my weakness, and the fear that coincides with it cripples me. I have an immense fear of rejection, and that’s not specifically related to dating. I was scared out of my mind during my interviews, because I feared that I wouldn’t get the job. If I were thinking about doing something with an unknown outcome or just something risky; I wouldn’t do it, because I’d rather not do anything than risk failure, because doing nothing is safe, it’s known. Also, my weakness causes me to fear that I am inadequate and can never measure up to society’s standards. (Sitting here I am afraid that you hate this blog and have already gone back to mindlessly facebook stalking someone)

That fear is present within me, because I am putting too much stock in the world. I fear people’s opinions instead of fearing and revering God. I am too safe and quiet, and instead need to step out in faith and trust that regardless of the situation God’s going to take care of me. (I just laughed a little bit typing that, because if you know what’s happened to me you know that God has gotten me through some ridiculous stuff, but still I struggle with trust)

It’s only in our weakness that God’s strength and power is made perfect. There are plenty of things I don’t know, I admit it. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is the one thing I know for certain; God is with me. To quote Groeschel, “He’s with you too, even right now as you read these words. He’s for you and wants to help you be the person he created you to be. He is the one for all of us.”

To sum it all up, this summer has been one of the worst and best times of my life. I have discovered my weakness, struggled with it on my own, and now I am ready for God to use it and me to glorify him.

“They are weak but He is strong. Yes Jesus loves me! The Bible tells me so.”