Where Does Your Hope Rest?

 

“A faithful person will have an abundance of blessings, but the one who hastens to gain riches will not go unpunished.”  Proverbs 28:20

 After my husband was laid off recently, we have been facing some questions and choices about his future career. Does he continue in the tech field because it pays well, or does he focus on something in more of the social service genre because it is more fulfilling? There are a lot of pieces to this puzzle and we are far from a decision.

 As I mentioned before, one of the things that we have benefitted greatly from with his previous job was the healthcare. Spoiler alert, not only does working in social services pay less, the healthcare isn’t as good either. I have multiple chronic conditions as well as a brain tumor. My conditions are pretty much all degenerative, meaning that it is likely things will get more challenging, and therefore more expensive, over time. The day my husband lost his job, I told him, “God is my health insurance,” and I meant it. God will provide for me, whether it is through healing me Himself or some other medical and financial means. I don’t know what this looks like, that’s where faith comes in, but I absolutely know that my  God will provide for me. Sometimes, though, God’s provisions come in the form of opportunities, like health insurance from a job.

 In addition to the healthcare, a tech job would definitely be more lucrative financially. Often they come with higher salaries in addition to other benefits like stock award and purchase programs. All that shininess is hard to resist, especially when you count in our opportunities for giving. If we cut our household income by 80-90%, there’s no way we could maintain the levels of giving we had previously. There’s also the allure of travel. I have to believe that my passion and desire in that area is from God because He has blessed it so and used it. There are so many things that money can buy, but money isn’t everything.

 Over the last few years, my husband has begun feeling less and less fulfilled by his job. He tracks it back to the first time he and his street outreach team administered Narcan and CPR to someone, saving their life – at least for that night. Once he had experienced this, moving 1s and 0s around on a spreadsheet to make or save money for a company, even millions or billions or dollars, felt less important. It wasn’t life-or-death. Did it really make a difference? When my husband initially received his lay-off notice, I think he experienced a hit of freedom. He was no longer bound to a job that didn’t stir his passions. He could look at other options. The world was his oyster. But that bubble of joy was quickly burst by the weight of his responsibility for his family and having to figure all that out.

 So, this week, we are looking at our budget together and making tough decisions, some really, really tough. We are trying to be good stewards of what God has provided us with right now through his severance package as well as looking toward what kind of salary he needs to earn in his next job. Can he take a position with a salary of only 10-20% of what he made before? What would that mean for our family and the people and organizations we support? Are there other options? My Mom suggested the idea of contracting, even part time, in the tech industry to supplement a more fulfilling job in social service.

 What I can tell you from today’s verse, though, is that running after money will not get us anywhere we want to go. It seems like everything is a balance though. You can’t not consider money because then you wouldn’t be a very good steward. God has blessed us abundantly. This we reiterated to me recently as I looked over my life and all the places I’d been as well as my regular opportunities to visit my happyplace, the beach. I hope this is confirmation that we have been faithful with what He has given us. I know we try so hard to be. But it can’t end there, it can’t just stay in the past. I can’t rely on, “I was faithful in my 30’s and 40’s” and hope that it carries me through whatever is ahead. How are we to be faithful in this season?

Here's the Thing: We have no idea what’s next. Neither of us knows what opportunities are out there, what choices we might be presented with. No one but God. He knows already what our next steps will be while we can’t even see the path. It’s like that scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where he has to take the “Step of Faith” onto the invisible path over the cavern. I must put my foot out and allow the weight of my body to follow it before I’ll find out where it will land. But we are not called to know, we are called to be faithful. So we are trying to be faithful with the finances we have now and prepare to be faithful, no matter what is coming next. We surrender our finances and, more importantly, our hearts to whatever God has planned. And in that, we are already blessed.