Dan the painter dude

Exactly 60 days from learning that my department at Deloitte DCS would be closing, God has opened the door for me to start a new job!!

Starting June 4, I will begin as the Operations Manager for Capstone Painting (www.capstonepainting.com) in Medina Minnesota: a small, family-owned business that does commercial and residential, interior and exterior paint. My job will be to serve as the liaison between owners, project managers, and customers, which has great similarities to my job duties at Deloitte DCS.

I found it utterly amazing that practically to the very minute of receiving the dreaded news, I got to say with pride, "I'm pleased to accept your offer."

There remains a few large issues to work out, namely health insurance. As you know, we are expecting a wee one in November. But remember, "perfect families need not apply"...

But I sense this is God's miraculous, mighty provision which will bring Him much glory.
Thanks for your prayers.

More to come!

Where is security?

Since going into forced unemployment nearly 30 days ago, I have learned a great deal. God has been daily helping me see things in my thinking and character which do not honor Him. This was my prayer not so long ago---I told God I wanted to be sanctified and that He had my permission to touch whatever part of my life He needed to in order to refine me. I decided that I wanted to be found IN HIM and He could take whatever steps necessary to make that a reality (Philippians 1:6). Well, God has been faithful to accomplishing that. The process is sure hard, but I trust the end result to be completely joyous.

This morning's lesson was that I have been drawing my sense of security and well-being from knowing my daily assignment, which has been, for the past 14 months, wrapped up in a Company name. Without realizing it, I had much of my identity wrapped up in the name "Deloitte."

Don't get me wrong...it's not a BAD thing to take pride in your company name and to give your company your enthusiastic loyalty. But I think I went a little overboard on it: that's all I'm saying.

Instead, I need to draw security and significance from being God's beloved, adopted son with all sins washed away by the blood of his only Begotten Son, Jesus.

Security and identity and significance don't come from being an employee at a prestigious company. That's the trap I fell into: the lie I boutht-into. I pray that in my next job, wherever it may be, I will keep my identity and security and significance intact by remaining in God's love (John 15:9-10).

And my prayer for you, dear reader, is that you too will discover whether your heart draws more security from your position in the world, or your position in heaven.

My whole life shifted on just two words

I was truly, sincerely hopeful until those two words were uttered. Our small department of 6 was ushered into a meeting and I was convinced--absolutely--that the meeting was all about reviewing our previous year's progress as a nationwide department, and looking ahead to the (obvious) challenges of the coming year.

The introductions were brief: I don't remember any of it. Within one minute, those words came tumbling out of our Sr. VP's mouth:

"Business Re-alignment"


And from there, things have been pretty screwy for the past 30 days. Our entire department was to be shut down in two weeks' time, and that would put me on the job hunt again after just 14 months after my last search.

Oh, and did I mention that just two weeks prior, we learned that my beloved is pregnant with another baby??

Sometimes my faith is strong as iron. Sometimes, weak as paper. Tonight, I fit somewhere in between. It's a scary reality, trying to figure out how to support a wife and 5 (soon to be 6) kids and no job anywhere in sight.

Join me on the journey as God transforms ashes into beauty: that's always His plan and we can only cling to Him as He accomplishes it through us and his body of believers at Bethlehem Baptist Church.

May God receive all the praise.

Confession

Comes not as a shock to almost any reader (I hope), but it is a big step in escaping pride...

After careful analysis and years of observation, prayer and pondering, I have come to the conclusion, only 9 1/2 years after the fact, that my dear wife and I stepped into parenthood unprepared. (I'm going to dare to say that I entered marriage unprepared as well, but that is a subject for a different blog).

I used to think I was a pretty darn good dad, better than average, or most (on my good days). But now I see that I'm just another thick-headed male, stubborn and full of pride and ego, bumbling his way along in half-prayed, scripturally undernourished, taking his wife and children along for the rocky ride of near-adolescent stupidity.

Heaven help us all.

Here now is my plug for scripture memory songs:

the lyrics of a song just popped into my head:
"This I call to mind, in this I have hope, the righteous love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end, they are NEW, EVERY MORNING! Great is your Faithfulness!" (Psalm something, something...).

I've heard it said that courage doesn't always express itself in conquering boisterously, but sometimes in just the meek determination to start again fresh yet again tomorrow morning.

So with that, for all my foibles and follies, I will rise tomorrow to try again to be a Godly dad and husband.