Monday, January 23, 2012

Midst of a Miracle

As I have gone through the transition from the end of the old year to the start of the new, I have spent some time recently just kind of meditating on the path of my life over the past decade, thinking about the upheavals and course changes that have come from both the shores of positive and negative turns. As you wade through the happenings of the day-to-day, your perspective can be a bit askew from the bigger scale picture. Dealing with everything that tries to lay claim to your attention, living and surviving down in the muck and mire, you can really miss some pretty important developments and happenings in your life. Certainly, such is the case with me. I have been a part of what I would consider to be miracles, but have never appreciated them or even recognized them. Wow, caught in the midst of a miracle and not even noticing. I find this to be a pretty amazing and surreal concept. I thought I would share one example today.

For nearly 10 years I lived in Ohio. I had a great job and was living life according to my plan. However, one day out of nowhere, I was overrun in a season of personal strife, and it was clear that I could not stay a moment longer. I made a call to a colleague of mine that I worked with in Virginia and told him that I was coming there to live and needed a job. The position materialized seemingly instantaneously and my work life and career progressed without the slightest hiccup. However, given all the personal crap that I was going through at the time, I never prayed about any of this. It's not that I took any of it for granted or was puffed up in my own pride, it's that I was just numb to so many things. The individual trees outgrew the forest.

However, when all of this went down 6 years ago, the senior position that I now occupy did not exist. On top of that, the budgets here were tight and there was a hiring freeze in place. The fact that I was hired essentially immediately after my job request is no trivial detail. I believe that I really was part of a miracle and that the Lord moved on my behalf to put me where I needed to be. I was in the midst of a miracle and I never recognized this until recently.