Pregnant

Losing Your Job Is Kind of Like Being Pregnant...

So we started telling people that he lost his job... and it turned out that pretty much everyone has lost a job at one time or another.  Here's a typical conversation:

"Hi!  How've you been?  It feels like forever since we saw you last."

"Um.  Actually, I'm not sure if you knew but my husband lost his job."

"Oh.  I'm so sorry to hear that."

At this point one of two things happen.  Either the person looks left and right and starts to back away from the jobless person, or (and this has happened more times than I ever would have imagined possible!) the person leans in and says, "I (or my partner, spouse, brother, mother, father, lover, neighbor) lost my (his her its) job, too.  It's the best thing that ever happened to me (him, her, it)."

What?! I guess not having a job is kind of like being pregnant.  Before you get knocked up you never notice anyone pregnant unless they are in your face, and I mean IN YOUR FACE.  After you realize that you indeed have conceived, you suddenly notice that pregnant women are all around you.  Well, once we started networking (which has lately become meeting for a cup of 99 cent coffee instead of lunch) we discovered that the formerly jobless were all around.  They had some great advice, too, but I'll save that for a later post.

By the way, I'm not pregnant and (neither is he).  Just in case you were wondering but didn't want to ask.

Caesar

Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s (“Ἀπόδοτε οὖν τὰ Καίσαρος Καίσαρι καὶ τὰ τοῦ Θεοῦ τῷ Θεῷ”) (Matthew 22:21).

I know this is probably going to come up sooner or later, so I figured I ought to just address it now: Why is your blog called Me, Family, World. Shouldn't it be God, Family, Country, Self? Well.... someone far wiser than I said “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” Basically, this is a blog about what's happening to me, our family, and our relationships with the outside world. I'm not blogging about my faith. Oh yeah, and the folks that do google “God, Family, Country, Self” probably won't be too thrilled with my blog. That's it. You're probably going to hear plenty about our church in the posts to come, but I'll try to keep the focus on our daily lives and adapting to being jobless and out of the pews.

You Need to Come Home Now

I had just finished a committee meeting at our son's school and was discussing lunch plans with the group when I got a phone call from my husband.

"You need to come home now."

I knew he had a meeting with Human Resources that morning, but this didn't sound good. I had walked to the school that morning, figuring that I could catch a ride home with one of the committee members, but when I looked around I realized everyone had already left. I put the phone away and started my walk home.

I'm not a patient person, so about 5 minutes into my walk I called him to ask what had happened. “They fired me.”

It's a good thing I was walking, because if I'd just been standing I probably would have fallen over. We'd moved across the country and had bought a new house in a new town barely more than a year ago for this job, and he had the only income in the family.

He went on, giving the details of his morning. What struck me was how the note of stress that had been present in his voice for months was completely gone. Gone. He sounded like a different man.

I finally got home and he looked like a different man. He'd been getting more and more serious as the budget cuts grew deeper and deeper. In front of me was my husband, but not the serious husband of the last year, but one who was laughing. To say I was surprised was an understatement.