Risk in the Valley!

In the immortal words of George Patton, “Every god damn day!”

I’m among the ranks of the gainfully unemployed. Every resume I fire off, every contact I make, it’s done with a prayer that something will come out of it. Sometimes I get a screening call from a recruiter. Sometimes I get an interview. Sometimes, the resume vanishes into whatever maw I fired it off into and I have no clue what happened.

But every resume. Every contact. Every interview. It’s all a risk.

I’m putting me out there. All my experience. All my triumphs. All my failures. All my hopes and prayers.

All of it knowing that it might not work out.

And I’ll be honest. Sometimes it’s enough to make me want to scream or go into a funk and just sit and watch TV.

And that’s when I remember that the words written thousands of years ago, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.” Psalm 23:4 – New American Standard

It tells me my job in all this.

It’s my job to look through the websites and want ads, find what I can do and apply for it.

It’s my job to ask for wisdom and tune my up resume to beat the AI gatekeepers that see the resume before a human ever does.

It’s my job to prepare for the interviews.

But, it’s not my job to give me the job.

If anything, Life has taught me God puts me exactly where he wants me. It’s when I’ve tried to do it myself that I end up depressed and eaten up with worry.

I’m walking through the Valley of Death in a sense. But I have resources. Resources that somehow seem to appear when I need them. The words David crafted so long ago have taken a new meaning to me. and maybe that’s what valleys are about. I can’t control everything, and maybe that’s what this time in my life is about. Learning to hand over control to the One who can.

My only job right now is to remember, when you’re walking through the Valley of Death, you keep moving. Otherwise, you die there.

And I’m not alone in this desert trek.

My Shepherd will get me through it. He’s done it before and he’ll do it again.

And He’ll get you through it as well.

Hang in there.

The oasis is coming.