By Patricia McClellan
I started working when I was 15 years old. Over the years that followed, I collected a plethora of skills. Somewhere along the way, I realized I was worth far more than my employer was giving me credit for.
I decided it was time to find a job with better pay, better benefits, and, preferably, an employer who would appreciate me for the Southern diva I had decided I was.
If you have ever filled out a job application, you know that statement alone deserves a moment of silence.
It starts with the job announcement, containing enough words to fill a small novel but somehow managing to say absolutely nothing coherent.
For several years, I filled out enough applications to wallpaper my kitchen. I got close a couple of times. I even landed an interview for a job in Missouri, only to have it canceled two days before the interview.
I was frustrated.
And so, I had a hissy fit that would have made Scarlett O’Hara proud.
Then, suddenly, the clouds parted, the angels sang, and I was offered a job.
On the spot.
No one was more excited than I was. I had finally made it.
And not just any job.
I was a supervisor.
I thought I was walking in tall cotton.
It didn’t take long to realize I had made the biggest mistake of my life.
I had left a job I absolutely loved to work somewhere where the motto seemed to be, “It’s not broken, so let’s fix it!”
Just when I thought I had things figured out, somebody would come along and decide to fix what wasn’t broken—and somehow manage to break it in the process.
I found myself asking God another question:
“Why did You let me get this job?”
That’s when I began to wonder…
Does God have a sense of humor?
For several years, I had prayed for this very thing.
And He gave it to me.
Exactly what I asked for.
Only to let me discover that getting what I wanted wasn’t necessarily the same as getting what was best for me.
Maybe God wasn’t ignoring me all those years.
Maybe He was preparing me.
Maybe He was protecting me.
Or maybe He was simply waiting for the right time to say, “So…you think this is what you want?”
Sometimes we spend so much time telling God how we think our lives should go that we forget He can see the whole picture.
We see the job offer.
He sees what comes after it.
We see the open door.
He sees what’s waiting on the other side.
Looking back, I can laugh about it now.
Because that job I thought was the answer to my prayers turned out to be an answer.
Just not the answer I thought it was.
And maybe that’s the funny thing about God.
Sometimes He gives us exactly what we ask for…
so we can finally understand why He had something better in mind.
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