Rainbows

Let me put on my blinders for just a moment. Ok; ready.

Why is it so difficult to find a job? Seriously, you would think employers would be jumping all over someone as talented, passionate, and confident as myself, not to mention the kind of heart that dwells in this body. I’m anxious to serve, to find a way to do some good and maybe make a living off of it. (Not that I have anything against volunteer work, either; it just doesn’t pay the bills.) I worked hard all through school, graduated at the top of my class in both high school and college despite significant obstacles and a few major setbacks. I have volunteered my time in doing the things I love and trying to establish my skill so that one day, an employer would talk to me.

Here is one day. And more than two years after graduating, I’m not getting the interviews I want. When I do interview, a few have seemed promising only to collapse in front of me for one reason or another. And nobody has contacted any of my references, so far as I know (and my primary references have told me – nobody’s been talking to them.) So what does it take for a girl to get something around here? Or around anywhere?

Now take the blinders off…because this is not the whole picture. I am happy. Very happy. And if you’ve read my most recent note, you know why. This place I’m in – this middle of nowhere – is absolutely incredible and doing great things in me. The work I am doing, the books I am writing or the secret projects I am working on or the conversations I am having, are going so well. I pick up my pen or my pencil or sit down at the keyboard and open up the latest chapter or whatever it is, and I am content. I know something awesome is happening through this gift that God has given me – both the gifts of my talents and the gifts of His peace. This contentment, really, and fulfillment.

And then another job falls through, and I can be quick to forget everything He is working on in me. Because it is terribly easy to worry about tomorrow when it seems nothing good is around the corner. Yet, I have absolutely unshakable confidence that something good IS around the corner. He’s got plans for me, and a purpose, and with as clearly as He has put that in my heart and in my hands and in my mind and in my dreams, both sleeping and awake, I am ashamed to say that I am at times getting impatient and narrow-minded, forgetting His gift and His blessing in the many places to focus on the one place He has yet to come through for me.

The skies clouded over this afternoon, not long after another rejection letter showed up in the mail (rejection after what I felt was a good interview and a strong opportunity). Rain started falling, and I was thankful for the moment of cleansing. When I went outside to run a few errands, I saw the clouds forming and splitting – the sun here in the west; the clouds in the east. And I started looking around for a rainbow.

Rainbows seem so rare to me, and I can probably count on one hand the number of times I have seen them in my life. Yet, here I was on a cloudy day with disappointment in my heart…looking for a rainbow. Some sign of His covenant and His promise, something tangible and outside of my heart that I can hold on to for at least a short while.

I am very blessed. I am very gifted. My heart is full, and I rest in absolute assurance. God whispers wonderful love into my ear, and I hear Him. I talk back, and He answers me again. Beautiful things are happening. So I need to take my blinders off more often and see the big picture instead of waiting just here on this one thing.

There’s got to be a job out there, and I pray it comes quickly. Not for money, necessarily, because God’s math is greater than mine and He has seen fit to take care of me so far. But mostly, I am anxious to move on to whatever the next stage of my life is. I’m anxious to keep moving forward and pushing myself and growing, and I am confident I can take my new heart with me. Fully and without compromise. More than disappointed with this rejection, I think I could easily say that as each day passes, my anticipation of a promise fulfilled and my anxiousness to pursue His calling only increases.

Confident and blessed and gifted and assured as I am, and as full of faith and overflowing with goodness and completely content as I am, and with so much peace in my heart, it surprises me how simple it is to worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow is then, and this is now and today, surprisingly, is beautiful, too.

Just as I am sure tomorrow will be.

Just as I am sure every day will be when I walk with God.

Because someone somewhere is seeing my rainbow, even today.