can't win for losing

do you ever have the moments or seasons of your life when it seems like, no matter how hard you try or home much effort you put in or how absolutely right you are, you still end up being labeled as the source of whatever problem may be at hand?

yeah ... it's felt like that for a few months now. the kicker is, it happened today from someone i didn't expect it from.

now, i'm not naming names or pointing fingers or anything of the sort, but it seems like sometimes, just as you get your hands over the edge of the cliff, there is someone ready to tread down hard on your tentative grasp on freedom and alleviation from the struggle. it just hurts a little bit more than normal when it comes from certain people, people you don't expect it from.

ah ... but why complain. i suppose i'll just start climbing the cliff again, after i dust myself off for a few minutes.

here's to hoping the top is a bit friendlier next time.

peace - b

confused by confusion

first, i am so very grateful for the news that i have a new job! after much looking and interviewing and hoping and compromising, it has been settled. i am going to be entering into the world of retail management with blockbuster as a store manager. three months of training at a location near-to-my-home, and then assigned to a location as-yet-to-be-determined, though still in lancaster county.

while it is definitely not what i went to school for or where i want to be long term, i have come to describe it as a "bridge job" for me - that is, it is filling the interim time between needing to leave my previous job and finding a place in fulltime, vocational ministry. it is serving to help pay our bills, teach me new business skills, and bring me in contact with a new regimin of people who need to hear about the hope and love i have found in God. hopefully, this bridge will be shorter than it is long, but we never can tell when the fog is thick.

the fog got just a bit denser of late, really just as of yesterday. after sending out many, many resumes to countless churches, parachurch ministries, and quasi-christian agencies, i got a cold call from a church in ohio letting me know that they will be losing their youth pastor at the beginning of this august - they got my resume from someone else who had asked me for one months ago. why would this come after it looks like i have at least a modicum of direction to my life after failing wildly with nothing for so many weeks?

in the end, of course, i attribute this to sovereignty, to purpose and design, to innummerable glorious qualities of God that i could never fathom in their complexity ... but, dang! i really flounder sometimes as to why these things happen when they do and how they do.

now, this church didn't offer the position or anything of that sort. they just wanted to "start the conversation" so to speak. (for the record, i do believe that i currently have 413 "conversations" started with various churchs.) obviously, i am hopeful that God brings a match to bear soon, and perhaps this could be the one.

but after my recent months of craziness and three years of drawing blanks in this regard, my confusion has become even more confusing ... and frustrating ... and defeating. luckily i have an unshakable faith, a wonderful God, an amazing wife, a loving family, and supportive friends. so in the end ... not really all so bad, aye?