When I thought about what I want to write about, I was unsure of what to start with. A lot of what I write recently has been daily journals of where I’m emotionally/mentally, what I’m learning and the work that God is doing. So I thought I would start with how I got this job that I currently work at. It was in this job that God really raise me up as a son and as a man.
Before I jump into it, I have to give a little bit of background.. Years ago, I said I would never work a manual labor job. I didn’t see it at the time, but I had several core beliefs that were driving my away from working with my hands and telling me that I wasn’t qualified for that work. Interestingly enough, God allowed me to work in those types of jobs. In 2016, I started working as an electrician’s apprentice. About a year into it, I just about had it. I actually didn’t realize that I picked a physical labor job until that moment. I absolutely hated it the entire time. I said “this was not for me,” “I’m not capable of doing these tasks,” “I was not built physically for this.”
I started looking for other jobs. I applied at several places and went through 1 or 2 interviews and heard nothing back. I was in shock because I was actually good at getting hired. At that moment, I finally stopped and said, “God, what are you doing?” Well, that was the second reaction I had. My first reaction was “God, this job sucks, get me out of it!” And what would a loving father do for his son. Help him find a job that he enjoys or can thrive at, right? Nope. He told me that it wasn’t the job that sucked, it was my character. Oh, how much I love being corrected. Not really. But that brought clarity to why there was so much anger and hatred going on. Instead of continuing to look for another job, I pressed on and allowed God to work in me through it. It was painful. There were moments when I wanted to quit. Somewhere in the ballpark number of 100 or more. Just a few. There were moments when I would throw my tools. There were moments when I would blow up at work and walk away to get a breather. I should have been fired multiple times. My boss showed kindness to me and helped me to take the space necessary when I would get to those moments.
I needed a father in my life to guide me through these hard moments. God continued to pursue me and show me that He was that father I was looking for. There were countless times I pulled the fatherless card. A lot of those times were out of pure hurt and desire to talk to a male figure to show me how to press forward. Some of those times were out of being a victim and it was nice to pull that card a lot. If you’re the victim, it’s not your fault. It’s someone else’s every time. God showed me how to get out of that mindset and heart set. He showed me how to come to Him in those moments and recognize that He IS FOR ME, not against!
About 6 months before I left the electrical company, I was really struggling with the work itself. God has brought me through so much at this point. He built my character up more than I could ever dream of! But I am an extrovert. I found myself working alone half the time and I felt miserable. I had a serious need to engaged with people. I loved having moments with God but there’s a point where I need to engaged and pour into people. That’s why I don’t understand introverts. They have this need to recharge alone. Although I do that, I go completely insane when I spend too much time alone. End of bunny trail. Those 6 months I was still an electrician, I continued to pray, God get me out but your will be done. The last 2 months, my prayer changed. GOD, GET ME OUT, period. It wasn’t a sweet Jesus moment where in one of His darkest moments, He still prayed thy will be done. I was in extreme heartache from this environment. That doesn’t justify my prayer changing to “just get my out.” Pain is a difficult thing to steward well.
One random day, I end up picking up my best friend from the airport as she was flying in from Texas to be at her mother’s surprise party. I was invited to the party as well so I popped in for a little bit. When her mom came in, she was super excited and surprised by all the family and friends and then flipped when she saw her daughter from Texas. I loved witnessing those moments. At one point, she came over and said how to me and ask how I liked my job. I explained some of the details in a lighter context and in the conversation, she ask if I was looking for a job and I heard the word “sales” in there. I told her I might be interested. I usually will look into any opportunity and pray about it.
A week later, she reaches out to me and we end up setting up an interview on an evening after work. By the time I was interviewed, I felt lost, still working as an electrician. Maybe God has me in this miserable electrical job for the rest of my life. Maybe God’s hope and future for me was already what I was doing and I just need to change my perspective or grip. Maybe God doesn’t have all of that. Maybe I’m too far gone to even get a decent job and have a good life. My self confidence was at 0. I didn’t even know what confidence was anymore. I walked into the interview with uncertainty if this was God. 15 minutes into it, I found out that they (husband and wife who are the owners) were looking to fill a technician position for roofing and restoration (mostly outdoor work). Oh great, this was definitely not God. I had fear immediately creep in. “I can’t work outside when it’s cold.” “I can’t work late hours again, I’ve done that before and it was horrible.” “How will I survive if I don’t eat dinner on the longer shifts” “I can’t. This is impossible.” As I’m thinking these things, my body starts to shut down. My stomach starts to freak out. I was in discomfort coming in and at the point, my body starts to go deeper into that. It’s amazing how our body will react to the thoughts and beliefs that we have. I brought up that I thought this interview was for a sales position. They asked me why I thought that. Come to find out that our previous conversation was her mentioning that I did Cutco sales before and I must have mixed that up with offering a job position. Sometimes, we place our mind in a position to hear only what we want to hear. Since I was in a hard season, I wanted to hear the words, job, sales, full time, working with or around people. I had already tuned my mind to hear those words.
Half way during the interview, they (the couple that owns the business) asked me to step out so that they can talk. When I came back in, they mentioned that they do eventually need a salesmen and couldn’t offer it completely at the time. That meant that I would have to work as a tech first and work my way into sales. I told them that I am willing to try that out. I was ready to jump ship from my other job but, out of wisdom, they offered me to work 2 days a week to try it out before jumping all in and finding out that it might not be a good fit. I think it was 2 weeks later when I first started working with them. After several weeks, I realized that some of my core beliefs deep down were false. I can work out in the cold. I can make it through on longer days. I can actually enjoy working around these people doing these projects.
I started in the beginning of winter so I experienced days when it was 20 degrees and below without the wind. The real feel on the worst day was 13 I think. That specific day, I was on a ladder that was positioned right next to the railing of a deck. The ladder was 12ish feet up to get the top of the house and the deck was maybe 12 feet above the ground with a total of about 25 foot drop. Did I mention that it was windy? Oh, and that I am scarcely afraid of heights? Yeah! I tried going up several times to paint this spot that caused me to reach a little bit. That made me look down and get height sickness. If I had fallen (which was not likely. I was just very fearful at this point), I would have been massively injured or worse. It was about a 25 foot fall to the ground. I even came back down TWICE to tell my supervisor that I couldn’t paint the spot because it was out of reach. It’s also too far up for my comfort. And twice, he told me to go back up and do it. This was either my first or second week on the job. Welcome to roofing and restoration, right?? I didn’t like my supervisor after that experience.
There were several more of those experiences where I felt incapable or uncertain on how to overcame obstacles. In case you didn’t know (because I didn’t at the time), every house is different, thus every job is different which means every day is different. At first, it seemed like every day was a new challenge. Before, that brought excitement to me. But after some time, it became frustrating. Side note: as a company, you try to track down the time it takes to do a certain task for estimate/price purposes. Because of where the company was at in adding more projects like windows, gutters, siding, and misc stuff, it was a constant learning process and just about everything was taking up more time than expected. We would have several jobs lined up in a day but we were thrown off schedule so much because we were doing something new and it just took time. Though it was a frustrating season, seasons are temporary. There was one point where it actually got exciting because we were starting to grow past the learning phase and get into a rhythm of things. Not only did the hard work pay off for our rhythmic tasks, it actually has brought us closer as a team. Now, we naturally work smoothly together. We started thinking as one, not just individuals trying to get our tasks done. We actually started looking out for each other and would get each other tools or material needed. I didn’t recognize that until recently. There’s just something about the team that I’m working with. Part of it was us sticking it out during the hard times and finding solutions together. Most of it is the hand of God on us. In the 20-25 jobs I’ve worked over the last 7 years, I’ve never seen a team work so well together. It doesn’t happen every day and it’s not always smooth but when it is, it’s like nothing else. Like I mentioned earlier, we think and move as one. That’s such a picture of the trinity of God. 3 different beings working toward the same purpose. This fires me up!!
I want to share one last story before I wrap this up and explain the big picture. Recently, we started learning how to install vinyl siding. It’s a plastic like material that’s simple to install on the side of the house. We did our first job several weeks ago and there were some challenges to it. It wasn’t as hard because we’ve been through challenges before and we (more so my supervisor/buddy/sauceman) are learning how to come up with quicker solutions because we’ve been in that learning mindset for several months now. This project wasn’t bad but the house itself was 3 stories tall. The top of it was in the range of 32-36 feet range from the ground. When I mentioned earlier about the 25 foot height being uncomfortable, this was definitely way past my range. The tallest I’ve been on a physical ladder (not total height off the ground) at this point was 17 feet. As we work our way from the bottom up installing this vinyl, I’m thinking, this is stupid! Not only do I not like heights, I don’t trust ladders. They flex too much, they move around. I like working on the ground. We don’t have earthquakes here so the ground doesn’t move! So we’re working our way up. There are 3 out of the 5 in our crew that are willing to working on the higher places. I’m one of them. I said I’m willing, but that doesn’t mean I like it. Our supervisor Trent is willing to do anything that we can’t/won’t do. He’s an awesome dude and I very much appreciate him. He worked on the very top to finish up. Before that, I was working on one side while he was on the other. I didn’t like being high up but I know that if I push past my fear (not just at work but in life), God will give me in the courage to do what I need to do. It also builds amazing confidence in yourself when you push past what is impossible. We’re climbing up and one day I was on the 23 feet mark of the ladder. That beat my record. That made me excited. The next day as we get to the tallest points before Trent had to finish it off, I made it to the 27 foot step. I felt comfort at that point. It may have been that the house would have caught the ladder if it slid to the left. Or it may have been that God was with me on top of a 27 foot height. I might be wrong but maybe our fear isn’t telling us that it’s not possible or that we can’t survive. Maybe fear is actually questioning if God is going to be with us in that moment when we push past it. Just something that came to mind as I was writing this. When I get to experience fear face to face and embrace the challenge ahead, there’s a confidence and peace that comes into my spirit. This combination of confidence and peace reminds me that when fear is ahead, there is a greater part of myself just past that. Many of you may know this but fear is something that is learned through experience and stories. But so is peace just past that. We can live in fear just hearing what’s going around us or we can actually step out in faith and walk into peace and confidence. This is exciting stuff and I am so blessed to have experienced it!
To wrap this all up, I want to remind myself and you all that even though there is amazing break through and so much good coming out of this, it’s not something that I earned or gained because of my ability. When I talked about the struggles I had as an electrician, it wasn’t easy. Even to the point where I was telling my boss several times that this kind of work is not for me. No one should tell their boss that in the middle of working for them. But I had to be real with him. Maybe I should have found another way to explain it or talk to someone else about it. I don’t know. What I do know is this: it was God’s kindness that I wasn’t fired. It was God’s kindness and mercy that my boss helped me through and didn’t lash me out.
Another thing I didn’t point out, my boss now shouldn’t have hired me. In fact, no manager should have hired me in that moment. I was lacking confidence in myself. I probably looked like a horrible candidate for the job. I found out months after I got the job that they didn’t think I was going to be the right person for the job. They didn’t think I was going to make it through the rough winter days and the difficult tasks. I would have agreed with them if I was in their shoes. I didn’t even think I was going to make it. I think they had more belief in me that I did in myself. My faith to make it through was lower than 0. I was literally taking it a step at a time to see if I was going to stand through it or fall. I say all this because every person in the world should have lost faith in me but the one person who didn’t was my Father in heaven. God. In the middle of my doubt, He was the one cheering me on. He knew I was going to make it. It was His kindness that led me day by day. It was His love that built me up. It was His mercy that helped me to press through. It was His grace that allowed me to get back up after every mistake. I realized, in the 6 months of working with Safe Haven, God was truly for me, not against me.
I mentioned in the beginning about the environment I was in as an electrician. I was alone half the time. In a way, this roofing/restoration job isn’t different. I still have the same amount of time being alone but my approach is different now. First off, I’m given so much freedom to be myself and to make mistakes and learn from them. This company has a freedom approach to be yourself whether they see it or not. What I didn’t know at the time of being hires is that that was and is exactly what I needed. It is in that freedom that I’m able express my giftings and knowledge and I am so blessed and grateful for that! Second, I recognize that I need human interaction so when I take a short break, I interact with coworkers if I haven’t been interacting with them that day. I’ll even put on some podcasts to listen to someone while I’m plugging away at a task. Or I’ll give someone a call. It all comes down to listening to Holy Spirit. He shows me where I’m at and if I need to call someone or listen to music or a podcast or even just sit and meditate. And those simple things not only put me in a healthy place, they reignite my excitement and it gives me a second wind at work. Again, the work environment itself hasn’t changed. The people are different and my approach to work is different. Those 2 factors have made all the difference in the world!
To say this story is about me would take away the truth about who the story is really about. I’m beyond blessed and overwhelmed to be part of the story, but this is about the One and True God, the faithful God. And it’s so easy to say those things about God. People use the phrase “God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good.” Or they’ll use other phrases that are generic. It’s one thing to say those things, it’s another thing is share HOW God is good. I don’t want to just use those phrases or sayings. I want to share the reason why I say that. You want to know the faithfulness of God? Just look back at my story.
I would love to share more about the seasons that I’m going through. God willing, I will share more in the weeks ahead. For now, I pray that you don’t just read the story as a story. I pray that you see that His faithfulness is true. I pray that you see that I’m not worthy of this because of what I’ve done but worthy because of what was done for me on the cross. I pray that you see that this journey isn’t just for me, it’s for all who believe in Jesus, the son of the faithful God. I pray that your faith would be lived out so that you can experience the amazing love that God has for you. Until the next time, I love and appreciate you all very much! Blessings!
