Tasty Poison

Any regular reader of my musings will know that I don't wake up every morning and leap out of bed because I'm so excited to spend a day at work. However, there are a few good things about it. It is nice to get almost no-interest checking, as our CFO calls it. I'm sure I'll use that $0.25/month for something. It's nice that they match the first 3% of our contributions to our 401(K) and 50% of the next 3%. But what makes or breaks any job is the people.

I have been blessed to make what I would call some friends at the Bank. As with any office, there are some people with whom you click and some you don't. I'm glad that I know Cliff as I can almost always count on a good laugh when he regales me with stories of his father's upbringing in West Virgina or when we collectively observe the absurdity of some situation, work-related or not. And if it weren't for Cliff I'd never know about Horniblow's Tavern.

However, there is a real danger here too. Cliff and I tend to be fairly like-minded with some things that I consider to be critical to life. Specifically, neither one of us tends to be too materialistic. We both have a sense that there is something more or different that we should be doing with life and we don't seek our fulfillment through performance reviews at work. We share a love for good beer and good food. We have things in common which tend to be the basis for a friendship. So what's the problem?

The problem is that dealing with real stuff makes me keenly aware of just how unsatisfying my daily grind can be. My wife bemoans the fact that men tend to have conversations on very superficial topics like the weather or sports. Maybe we all want to avoid the reality of the situations we're in.

I certainly wouldn't want to avoid talking to Cliff. Those conversations help get me through each day and the tedium of listening to my coworkers treat server uptime like they are operating a heart-lung machine at WakeMed. But I just find that I leave thinking about where I am and where I should be. And what I realize as I write this is that this needs to drive me to my knees to ask God why I'm at the Bank, what He wants for me to do there, and how long He wants me to stay.

I'm slowly learning that if God doesn't open doors it's unwise to force them. I think I need to apply what Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippians (emphasis added):

Phi 4:11-13 ESV
(11) Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.
(12) I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.
(13) I can do all things through him who strengthens me.