Building Through Breaking

Is it ever cool to be openly crying in a Panera?

I can speak from experience that the answer is no.

But there I was, tears streaming down my face. Feeling like my entire world was crumbling all around me. Feeling like the mayor of Loserville.

Let me set this up. Since my last post, my world has been and endless stream of frantic calls, interviews and frustrating run-arounds in trying to find a new job. The weight of my responsibility to my kids, my wife and my father-in-law who lives with us now, seemed heavier with each dead end. The knot in my stomach grew with each person who looked at my resume and said some variation of, "This looks great, but we just don't have anything right now..."

In my search, I adopted various Paneras around time as my temporary office. It's good for decent coffee, free wi-fi, and to meet with my connections and (soon to be!) employers. But after 3 weeks on the job hunt trail, even the staff at Panera seemed to wonder why I kept showing up.

So there I found myself, at Panera on the strip. It was Friday at 5:00. I was literally one of 2 or 3 customers in the place. I was waiting on a phone call where I was quite certain, I was going to be offered a job. I had finished a week's worth of interviews with the company. Everything in my gut told me I had it. I had every prayer warrior I know throwing up prayers on my behalf to the Big Guy.

But when the call came, the job offer didn't.

Ouch.

$$@#$&*$!!!!!

As I hung up the phone, the weight of 3 week's worth of frustration over my situation came crashing down on me. Outside, it was pouring rain. Which was perfect, because inside I sat with tears streaming down my face. In a Panera for crying out loud!

I felt like a loser. I couldn't understand why God would forget me now. I didn't feel like I did anything wrong to lose my last job, the agency where I worked just closed up shop. So why wouldn't God help me out now? Was there really something valuable to be gained from me sitting in a Panera sobbing like a baby?

Apparently so.

I gazed out the window. Outside, a hospital is going through a major renovation. An entire new wing is being added, so the place is covered with scaffolding, construction equipment and debris. You can start to see what it will look like once complete. A beautiful glass facade at the entrance is just starting to come together.

But at the moment I looked, crying in Panera and feeling hurt and hopeless, the hospital looked like a big ugly mess.

And it was at that precise moment, I felt God speak to me.

Not in the big, booming, Voice-of God kind of way you see in the movies. It was a quiet message that I felt tug at my heart. And what he said was:

I am building through breaking.

To build that hospital I was looking at requires a lot of breaking. Rocks get blasted. Metal gets bent. Concrete gets jackhammered. But through all these violent, painful actions, something beautiful is built. The architect's dream is realized.

The master architect was telling me the same thing was going on in my life. Through these hurtful, broken episodes, he was building something beautiful. So my job really wasn't to question why I didn't get the job offer. My job was to trust that it was still part of God's blueprints for my life. To trust that he was building something amazing for me. But to do that it means that certain things have to be broken.

Some things also apparently have to be wired with TNT and blasted into oblivion.

So the Monday after my little "episode" at Panera the place that told me "no" called back offered me a 2-3 month contract gig. In many ways, it's a better situation. No I can see how much I like them as much as they can see how much they like me, while continuing my search for a full time gig.

God has a plan. While I often have no idea what He's doing, I really can't wait to see what he will build out of my brokenness.