all right today I want to talk a little bit about how I got passed over for
promotion that I thought I deserved that looked like my dream job that was like
everything I wanted and why not getting this was one of the best things that
ever happened in my life so when I was in my mid-20s I was newly married and I
kind of found myself in a tricky spot I was working at this large company and I
had kind of pigeon-holed myself into a department into kind of a career ish
thing that wasn't really given me any opportunities for advancement and on top
of that it was something I wasn't really good at I didn't enjoy and if you've
ever been in a job that you're not good at but you're actually trying really
really hard it's a very frustrating kind of thing to deal with Albert Einstein
has this quote that I love where he says everyone is a genius but if you judge a
fish by his ability to climb a tree he will go his entire life thinking that
he's stupid and even though I had arrived and all my previous jobs prior
to this one because I was in a position that I wasn't gifted for I was really
beginning to feel that I was feeling like I was just mediocre and I couldn't
do a good job at anything the reality was I was just in the wrong position
doing the wrong job it didn't line up with my natural giftings and as a
result it didn't matter how hard I tried it just wasn't going to move forward and
so while my position was so difficult the department right across the hall was
exactly where I wanted to be you know I saw Ivy League grads and their
three-piece suits having so much fun and the job obviously being incredibly
lucrative as well and so that was where I wanted to be and I thought that was my
ticket out of this really difficult job and so when a position opened up in this
department like I jumped I was thrilled I was super excited to apply for it and
because I had been in this position for years I had some unique experience that
would give me a leg up on the competition and getting this job and to
be honest was one of the few jobs in the entire firm that my experience actually
would help me get the job on top of that because I work so closely to the guy who
was hiring for the job I actually had a little bit of relationship with him so
that was helpful as well and if that wasn't good enough I had more college
education than anyone else who was applying for the job as well so after
all these years of struggling in this job that I felt like I wasn't gifted for
like this just was my breakthrough it was just clear to me that this was the
way I was going to break out of it this was the opportunity I've been waiting
for looking at things from a natural
perspective I was the only applicant that really made sense like all of the
measurable metrics would have pointed to me and so I can still remember where I
was sitting the time of day really the number of clouds in the sky when that
email came through that was congratulating my coworker on receiving
the promotion that I thought I deserved now I am so thankful that God doesn't
give us everything we pray for I've prayed for a lot of dumb things in the
past and I'm really glad that God doesn't answer all of our prayers but
this was a really really tough one to swallow you know at the time I felt like
I was trapped on a desert island and a plane hadn't flown by in years and one
just flew by and just didn't see me you know I was completely devastated and
honestly I kind of viewed this as confirmation that I was just doomed to a
life of mediocrity and stuck in a job that wasn't good at yeah I felt like I
was stuck and this just kind of was like the nail in the coffin that this was my
lot in life but God had other plans and in interesting ways like he normally
does and so probably another year or maybe even two go by and I'm just feeling
more and more stuck I'm feeling more and more like this is going nowhere and then
my boss calls our entire department into a conference room and begins to explain
that due to a recent merger we had our entire department is no longer needed
and there were tears all across the room many of these people who I've worked
with had worked for this firm for decades and also had an incredibly
specialized skill set that was gonna make it pretty difficult for them to
find jobs elsewhere and if I hadn't been like so calloused from being beat up for
so long I've kind of being stuck in this job I probably would have been more
freaked out about getting laid off you know I honestly felt like I was just
kind of at the bottom of the barrel there wasn't much lower that I could go
and so it kind of felt like if anything's gonna happen it's probably
gonna go up from here and so over the next few weeks as
everybody began looking for jobs I started kind of going down this path and
I just felt like the Lord was leading me to not look for a job and to focus on my
fledgling blog at the time and so this is 2008 and I don't know how many blogs
you read in 2008 but it was not a very common thing and a whole lot of society
had no idea what a blog was and very few bloggers were actually making any money
alone enough money to pay all the bills so I told my wife Linda and we had a
discussion about it and I honestly thought that she would say that's insane
that's crazy when I can do that but she was actually incredibly supportive and
she felt like that was the right thing to do as well and maybe it was the right
thing to do but it just felt insane I had been working ten hours a week on
this blog just kind of in my free time in my spare time for the previous year
and at that point I was earning about two dollars an hour into add the
challenge Linda I had about 46,000 dollars of debt that we were working
really hard to pay off and she had pretty much an entry level very low
paying job so together we didn't have a whole lot of income so I often wonder
about what Moses was thinking when God parted the Red Sea because God told him
to take your staff and point it take the stick and point it at the Red Sea and
watch it part you know if I was Moses I'd probably think really God you want
me to take a stick and pointed it at this big body of water and watch it just
part and that's a little bit of how I felt with this whole thing like really
this just doesn't make any sense but regardless I had decided when I first
came to know the Lord that I was going all the way with this thing if God is
who He says He is then He either is or He isn't and that I was going all the
way or I'm not gonna do it at all the middle of the road kind of
in-between Christianity was just not something I was interested in and so
over the next few months there were lots of awkward questions from really
well-meaning people asking me what I'm gonna do and I honestly didn't want to
tell them I was too embarrassed I was ashamed and just kind of nervous to tell
them what the actual plans were that the Lord had for me and so I worked really
hard to avoid those conversations whenever I could and so over the next
few months I began to see miracle after miracle after miracle happen with our
blog and it just began to grow and we begin to get more traffic and the
earnings began to go up and even more important than that I absolutely loved
the work I was doing I felt meaning and purpose and I had joy and I felt like I
was actually gifted at it and I was able to see some of the real and meaningful
impact that I was having on other people's lives with what I was doing as
well and ultimately it only took nine months for me to get to the point we
were earning more from our blog than I was from my old day job and then just
another six months later I was earning triple from my blog
had been in my old day job and honestly the money was just the icing on the cake
the joy and the satisfaction that came from doing work that I felt gifted to do
and to be able to have some sort of purpose and the work that I was doing
was just the most amazing thing ever and as the years went by I found out more
and more about that job that I wanted so bad and it just wasn't all it was cracked up
to be you know ultimately God is smarter than us and He knew He knew what I
wanted and so even though I was praying for this one thing I'm just really glad
that he didn't give me the answer to my prayer so if you're in a situation like
this or if you know somebody who is stick with it and keep trusting God He's
got your back He's not gonna leave you He's not gonna forsake you hang in there
and you have to remember that He is working even when you can't see that
He's working anyway I feel like God has done so many miraculous things in the
life of my family and this is just a drop in the bucket and so I'm actually
working on a book right now where we're gonna be sharing a lot of these amazing
things that God has done in our lives and some of these lessons that we've
learned in the process and if you found this to be helpful let me know by
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that's all for today be blessed be a blessing and I'll see you soon