Unemployed and Hopeless!

I had been at the company for only two years when the first round of layoffs hit. My job survived until the very end of this first round, when they finally had to lay me off too. The company was quickly losing business as the economy took a big turn for the worse, and a halt was put on the house building industry, which affected us directly.

After one week of being gone, I got a phone call from the ops manager asking me to come back in a different position that needed filling as someone had just quit, and they really wanted me to have first dibs at the job before they searched outside the company. It was a higher position than the one I left with, but the pay would be a lateral move from my old position. At that point, I did not care that the pay would be the same; this single mom just wanted and needed a job!

About six months later, more layoffs. Each department was cut in half and we were running on a skeleton crew. I survived the first three or four rounds of layoffs until my head was inevitably “placed on the chopping block” and I too was laid off (again). Soon afterwards, the company closed its doors.

Right after the first layoff, I started a training program to get certified in medical transcription. Now, I at least had this new skill that I could use to find a new job. I was not expecting it to take very long until I found another job, especially with all the different types of experience I had in different fields and now I had medical transcription certification on top of that. However, it took a LONG eight months before I would find another job after this final layoff.

God provided every need while I was unemployed (through unemployment, which was not much, and child support). We never went without a meal and all of my basic living expenses were paid out of the very meager checks I lived on during that time. I busted my chops five days a week trying to find another job to no avail. I went to job fairs, applied for every job I heard about by word of mouth, jobs listed in the paper and online and even dropped of resumes to clinics and hospitals to no avail. After six months, I got really burned out and felt completely hopeless as I tried so hard to do everything I could, but I still did not get any offers. So, even though God was providing our basic necessities, and I saw Him come through many times, I was still very discouraged.

At that six-month point, I realized that I was beginning to tie my value as a person to having a job. Society did a great job feeding into that feeling of hopelessness. I noticed for the first time that everyone asks what you do for a living (where you work) when they first meet you, and it really irritated and embarrassed me, especially when I was trying so hard to get a job to no avail.

One morning in particular during this time, I woke up crying and could not stop all morning. I had hit a low point. I was on my knees crying out to God to help us financially, to get me a job and to give me HOPE. I cried out, “God, if you could just show me HOPE that there’s a job out there for me, I could handle this better. All I’m asking for is HOPE right now…Something…ANYTHING!!!!” About 30 minutes after I prayed this, my doorbell rang. A single mom friend of mine whom I had not seen in months was on my doorstep. She hurriedly said, “I am on my lunch break and am almost late getting back to work so I have to go, but God kept telling me to drop this off to you…NOW.” She handed me a CD. I thanked her and put it in as soon as she left.

Would you believe that EVERY song on there with the exception of one or two of them, was about HOPE? Hope in God, hope in our circumstances and the hope we have for a good future because of God’s faithfulness. That was far too coincidental to be anything but a direct answer to my prayer for the hope I needed to find a new job! That CD gave me a new level of hope, energy and determination to go back out and hit the pavement even harder until I got my new job! Praise God that He gives us the hope we need as we need it! His grace is sufficient for me!