Tuesday, 20 November 2007

• A Halo Glow

  I was told when I was 19 that I had a halo glow and it would follow me all my life, making things happy for me.  At that time, I was happy-go-lucky.  I walked into every place I intended to work, interviewed and was hired.  I am a hard worker.  Sometimes, I worked 7 days a week, more than 8 hours a day.  I held several simultaneous jobs for three or more years.  I had excellent recommendations from co-workers and supervisors.  My halo glow smiled at me and let me skitter around, doing what I wanted and becoming what I thought I should be at that moment in my life.

  I fell in love with a job once.  Or rather, it fell in love with me.  I applied as a 9-1-1 dispatcher in October of 2003.  I also applied for school to become a nurse.  I figured I'd do one or the other.  I got the job and began my love affair with dispatching.  A year and a half later, I was pregnant.  I knew I would have to leave.  My calling as a mother was stronger than my love for public safety work.  My first day back after maternity leave, I handed my letter of intent to the supervisor and wept profusely, post-partum tears mingling with my very real and tragic realization that I needed to stay home with this precious baby for a while and leave my beloved job.

  A year later, I bawled again, this time because I knew I would have to go back to work and leave my dear son, abandoning my stay-at-home mom status.  It was okay, though, my husband would become a stay-at-home dad while he was in school and my parents would help.  We moved to California and I began applying for jobs.  I applied to six dispatching jobs, tasting the excitement in the air as I spoke to each place, sitting alongside dispatchers in the communications center for each facility.  I began to look forward to being in the chair, talking to the officers, the public, the firefighters, making a difference for people you might never meet.  To them, I would be that calm, reassuring voice on the phone, the one that helped them cope.

  The first place seemed promising, they were incredibly supportive of employees.  I was one of four applicants.  I interviewed, but they chose someone else.  No big deal, there were other places.  The next place was incredible, but a bit of a drive away.  I interviewed and waited.  While I was waiting, I interviewed at another place, close by, seemed a little disorganized as an agency, but had a lot of what I was looking for.  They gave me a background investigation packet as a tentative job offer.  I filled all 24 pages out in two days, eager to get to work.  Three months later, they denied me and said that I had failed my background investigation.  "But," I said, "I was a good employee.  I came to work on time, I don't have anything on my criminal record.  I love dispatching."  Isn't that enough?  I wondered.  Appeal denied.  Fourth agency interviewed me, found out I had failed my background and wouldn't consider me further.

  So, I thought, maybe I'll re-apply later, after baby is born, when I don't have to worry about hiding my growing belly.

  "But I don't want you there." 

  "God, what doors are open?  I see nothing but a hallway of shut doors, where are You leading me?" 

  Dispatching was my life before Cameron was born.  Tears spring to my eyes when ambulances rush by with sirens and lights blaring.  I ache to be in that chair, helping people like I used to.  I never thought that my return to work would include ANYTHING but dispatching.  I was cut out of that material, it fit me like a glove.  I lived to go to work.

  "But I don't want you there."

  "Where do you want me?"

  "Somewhere else."

  I apply for a full-time receptionist job at a medical office.  They are very impressed.  I make it through a grueling 2 hour interview and am in the top two for the job.  My second interview is amazing.  I felt connected to the doctors and staff.  They offer the job to someone else.  It hurts a lot.

  "I'm trying not to be disappointed with this, because I don't want to be disappointed in Your ways and I want to trust that You know what's best."

  "I do."

  "But why does it have to hurt so much?  Why are all my dreams behind the closed doors?"

  "Because I don't want you there."

  "But, I don't have any money.  My last paycheck was $207 and I had to pay $200 of that for Libby's pasture rent.  Is that what you want?  You want us to owe the world and never be able to pay it back?  You want us to be so poor that the calls keep coming and we just have to turn off the phones?"

  "Trust me."

  "I want my halo glow back.  I want to waltz in and be offered more work than I can accept.  I want to have choices about things.  I want to be comfortable and not hurt so much."

  "It's not about what you want."

  So my classes are registered for.  I'm starting school in January at this point, unless that door is shut again.  The 35 applications that I have sent in for other jobs in the surrounding 50 miles have had no answers.  No one wants me, it seems.  Chewing on that has been difficult.  I have been hurting a lot and fighting to accept God's thoughts and input on my life in regards to jobs, marriage and my growing baby inside.

  Someday I'll look back and maybe it will make sense.  My halo glow slipped off somewhere between going to work for the last time and changing a diaper.

   

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