Trusting God to Deliver

You know, for years I’ve prayed that God would increase my faith and help me trust Him more each day. I just realized He’s doing it! When I moved back here from Vidalia and through everything – my heart getting broken for the first time, losing that job I moved back for, breaking my leg, being unemployed, all that struggle to make ends meet while continuing to work as if God was my “boss”…

Well, quite often in the last several months I have been noticing more and more how much God’s been taking care of me in “little” ways. Like, I will have absolutely nothing edible in the house and someone will ask me to dinner, pick up the tab for lunch or whatever. And when I thought the clothes I had were about to absolutely fall apart, God sent some nice hand-me-down clothes that have a lot of wear left in them. He’s been encouraging me through it all. No matter how lonely I feel, I know that He is with me no matter what and somehow knowing that helps me endure.

And, this last week God granted me the courage (and ability to recognize and ) to walk through an open door in relation to speaking to the boss about a raise. It's the first time I've ever felt led to actually ask for a raise instead of just looking for another job. I want to stay here. I believe this is a good fit for me and that I’m a good fit for this place. I like being able to use these God-given talents in service to His mission. I know I do solid graphic design work and have been called upon (sometimes daily) do do graphic design duties and other such creative or media based things that are separate and apart from the administrative assistant job I'm doing. They're fairly compensating me for the administrative position, but since they didn't hire that media guy, I'm happily picking up some of that stuff. So I asked specifically if a raise could be negotiated based on that work I am doing and hope to continue doing here.

I asked for the moon, but I know that God will work things out – He will provide exactly what I “need” and that’s good enough for me because I know I’ll be happiest with that because He knows what is best for me. I also know that that "moon" I asked for is still less than half what this place would pay for these services each year, even in this market.

Speaking to the boss about that was one of the absolutely scariest things I’ve done in a long while. My heart was beating crazy and I had a hard time keeping my thoughts together, but I’d been thinking about/rehearsing what points I wanted to hit when I finally spoke to someone and I think I hit most of them while I was in there with him. He’s really easy to talk to, but it was scary all the same. Thankfully, he didn’t let his eyes bulge out of his head when I started talking about this. I know that’s not a comfortable position for him to be in either. But in all honesty, after praying for more than six months about the decision of whether or not to actually say something to anyone about this, I felt led to go ahead and talk to someone, but was still waiting for that open door. Talk about unnerving. But it all kinda fell into place and I’m thankful to have said what I needed to.

I wish I’d said more, but what I did get out was enough. And I think I got across that I wasn’t asking because I just wanted a fancier car or whatever – I really need it and needed to know if they could help me with it or if I was going to have to seriously start looking for a part time job. I’ve already been doing some freelance stuff – thankfully God’s been sending those jobs a little along. It’s been neat to watch Him work in that way to keep me humble and to keep me dependant upon Him, but I really felt like I needed to step up to the plate for once instead of just kinda sweating about it then giving up without doing anything but pray.

I’m still not sure how all of this will pan out. The boss isn’t the one with the final say around here, but he knows who to speak to about it. I’m prepping to receive one of those “sorry, we can’t help you” kind of responses, but I’m hoping for something a little different than that. I hold out no hope for receiving that moon I asked for, but at this point where I barely have enough left over at the end of the month to simply purchase groceries, something is better than nothing. And I know it’ll probably take more than a month for him to get back with me on it, but I’ve waited more than six months to actually open my mouth – what’s a few more months?

Psalm 25:5

Lead me in Your truth and teach me,

  for You are the God of my salvation;

For You I wait all the day long.