Best Laid Plans

I had it all figured out.  I have three children who will be ready to go off to college in the blink of an eye, and six months ago, in a flash of brilliance, I realized that if I could land a job at Rutgers University I would be able to send all three of them through school AND earn my master’s degree at no cost.  Genius!  So I started sending my resume to Rutgers for every office admin position that popped up on their employment website.  My thought was that I could work full-time at the university, put in 10-12 hours a week at Unity, and start taking graduate courses in the fall – no problem, right? But thirty resumes and five months later I hadn’t received a single reply from Rutgers.  I even applied for a job at Raritan Valley Community College but was informed several weeks after my interview that they had hired another candidate. 

I have recently decided that if I want something it’s up to me to go after it.  I understand all about prosperity consciousness, but as far as I'm concerned, God is a BE-er, not a DO-er.  I have to do the DOing, while God does the BEing.  I can have what I want, and God is behind me 100 percent.  But taking action to make it happen is up to me.  So I said to myself, “I am in no real hurry – I can wait – I’ll just keep sending resumes to Rutgers, and eventually something will stick.” 

Then one day, a thought came to me out of nowhere.  “Maybe this isn’t going to look like you thought it was going to look . . . maybe instead of a 35-hour/10-hour split, this is going to be more like a 20-hour/20-hour split.”  I interpreted this to mean that maybe rather than looking for a full-time job and reducing my hours at Unity to 10, what I might actually be looking for was another part-time job and to reduce my hours at Unity to 20.  At the time I knew that this was a significant mental shift.  In fact it felt like the idea, as mundane as it seemed, had come from somewhere other than me.  Now the field of possibilities had expanded, and I began to consider new part-time positions.  

Not long after that, I saw an ad on monster.com for a part-time office admin position at a local synagogue.  “What?” you say?  “A synagogue?  How did we go from Rutgers to a synagogue?”  Well, quite honestly, I have no earthly idea.  But for some reason I felt compelled to apply for the job, and within a day of submitting my resume, I had received a call from the Rabbi.

After my interview at the synagogue, I just knew I had gotten the job.  And for some reason, beyond every reasonable explanation, I felt compelled to accept it.  “Okay, so apparently this is the direction we’re going?” I said to God.  And God said, “Yes.”  So now I work 20 hours a week at Unity and 20 hours a week at a synagogue.

The older I get, the more tempted I am to think that I am squarely in control of my life.  That God doesn’t really play as big a role in the events of my life as my starry-eyed younger self used to think.  But there is no question in my mind that something larger than myself has led me to this new job at the synagogue.  And there is also no question that the purpose of my working at the synagogue is to enhance my work at Unity.  So apparently this is the direction we’re going now.  Not only can I live with it, but this strange turn of events has somehow renewed my faith.  For the first time in a long time, I'm excited to see what Spirit has in store for me. 

~REBECCA