“How’s the new job?”
I get asked this question a lot… and it’s hard for me to want to answer the question with a casual “good” that most people who ask are probably expecting. It’s like when someone asks how you are. How often do they really, R-E-A-L-L-Y want to know?
To adequately answer the question, I have to back up several years. Because, when you take a job it doesn’t really ever start when your offer letter says that you start. There’s been a preparing that’s taken place – usually when you didn’t even know that’s what was going on.
So rewind to a time when I’m working full-time in camp ministry while simultaneously chipping away at Master’s. It was a season filled with abundant learning; some of it practical and some of it theoretical. Topics surrounding leadership, management, the Bible, callings, shortcomings, passions, spiritual formation, and community. Some I was learning because I was in school, some I was learning because of my job, and some of it I was learning (quickly) because I was in seminary while also in ministry. (I’d highly actually recommend that pursuit — immediate application helps it stick a little more).
God’s Heart
While there had always been things in Scripture that caused some stirrings in my heart, at this juncture there was no denying them. I couldn’t escape the passages, the central themes, the very character of God’s heart that circled around His love for all people… especially the orphan, the poor, the widow, the foreigner. The more I studied, the more sure I was that this was a trait of God’s character that I needed to be more diligent in emulating. And while camp ministry as a whole provided me some opportunity for this in some ways, I was feeling called to it a little more directly.
In my quest, we embarked upon various attempts to incorporate this in our lives. It’s a huge part of why we did foster care. It’s why we started serving food at the homeless shelter in Santa Fe once a month. It’s why I invited a homeless woman to live with us for a few weeks. It’s why we considered a drastic move to Costa Rica.
Our why was deeply rooted in a desire to carry out this call to care for those who have historically been left behind, forgotten. I wanted to do more, but I wasn’t ever sure how, or what. Suffice it to say that during that season I was often engaged in an internal battle, a growing dissatisfaction with an unclear idea of what actually needed to change.
We left camp almost 2 years ago exactly.
Not because we wanted to, not because we chose to… but, we are now assured even more in hindsight, it was time. Due to a mix of COVID-19, massive lay-offs, and probably a million other reasons we won’t ever know the answers to – we packed our camp-life up and blindly took steps into whatever was next. God was most evidently sovereign in our being let go, bringing us to Missouri, and giving us a season to be. All of it had been preparation – of that I am certain.
It wasn’t until 1.5 years later that I came across a job that tugged at those slightly rusty heartstrings. I had, after all, been spending all of my time taking care of our sweet little one (an orphan – in almost every sense of the word). In reality, I knew taking any job – spending any hours away from K – would mean that the job had to be something I was deeply excited about. The why had to coincide with those urgings God had begun stirring in me several years prior.
New Neighbors
Crazily enough, it’s already been 10 months of working at City of Refuge. My every day is filled with the unexpected… and every day we are coming alongside the foreigners who now reside in our town. They are our new neighbors.
They are people who had to leave everything behind because their lives were being threatened by war or persecution. People who had to leave quickly – sometimes with nothing more than a backpack. People who have lived in refugee camps for years and years before finally making it out. People who struggled to get on airplanes out of Kabul as the Taliban advanced in Afghanistan last August. They were teachers, or doctors, or farmers, or directors of organizations – and now they are putting one foot in front of the other, longing to thrive; working hard to start over.
The hurdles are enormous.
Learning a new language is hard, especially as an adult. American culture is very different from the many countries our new friends are coming from in almost every way. The things we value are different. Our individualism, compared to their community/family-centered way of life, is confusing.
My world gets bigger – every single day.
Because, even when gas costs almost $100 to fill a tank, I remember that I can still afford to fill the tank. That I have a car to fill a tank. That I have a car that will reliably get me from home to work and back every day. I know how to drive. The street signs are written in my language. I know that a stoplight means I should stop. I know when a police officer pulls me over, I should stay in my car and not get out. If my car were to break down, I would know who to call and that I would easily be able to communicate with whomever I’d call. I’d know how to call an insurance agent and file a claim.
There are a billion small examples wrapped up in the idea of transportation that most Americans don’t think twice about. At least I didn’t. I’m alerted to new challenges each day – partially because I still feel “new”, partially because each individual has a unique set of circumstances that might require an entirely new thing to figure out (like one of our staff being named an executor of a will), and partially because every culture has different approaches or things about it that mean a sharp learning curve.
The People We Meet
And the people we get to meet and know are exceptionally kind and generous. Our office has been filled with random delicious foods – Eritrean and Burmese cuisine at our fingertips. Our team is filled with radically selfless people — the kind who jump in to help each other out in a pinch, the ones who throw on some gloves and pick up all the trash outside the dumpster that was misplaced over the weekend. Our city is filled with incredibly generous people – the ones who give when we share needs.
My days are filled with a random assortment of tasks – sometimes it’s calling the fire department, or managing a conflict, or meeting with a donor or a staff member, or chatting with a refugee or getting them an item from the basic needs closet, or working with developers on a database, or submitting payroll, or sending invoices, or reconciling the monthly budget, or prepping for a Board Meeting, or strategically figuring out how we can more efficiently and effectively meet more needs while still holding true to our core values of relationship and truly caring for others. Today, an Afghan friend walked in looking for me to help his cousin fill out an application to work at the McDonald’s down the street. And… there’s a lot more to actually add to that list, but you get the idea.
It’s fulfilling, rewarding work.
So when I get asked how the job is going, I want to be able to quickly sum up all of the above and more. Because without a context for how I got here, some of the “good” feels lost.
The reason it’s good is because the Lord was putting this very work on my heart years ago without me ever knowing City of Refuge existed. The reason it’s good is because I can see the multitude of ways that my previous experiences and jobs have prepared me for this role – and that is really humbling and beautiful to me. The reason it’s good is because I feel like I’m living out a calling that seems close to God’s heart. The reason it’s good is because we are helping real people while simultaneously being blessed by them in the process. The reason it’s good is because only God could have put me in this role at this exact time, for such a time as this.
I’ll try to share more as we continually grow and seek to meet the needs of more people. I grow increasingly more convinced that part of my role as a believer is to simply bear witness to all that God is doing. This is a way for me to do that: to write, to share.
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Maybe your world will get bigger, too.
