Transformed- Vocational Health

 I have a weird confession.

Many, many mornings over the course of my work history, I have stumbled out of bed toward the coffee pot with the words of Todd Rundgren’s 1983 Bang the Drum All Day playing in my head:

I don’t want to work
I just want to bang on the drum all day…

I know….that’s really weird on many levels. It’s an annoying song, I don’t play the drums, it doesn’t make sense, it’s from the 80’s, and the list goes on. Obviously, work isn’t something we always bounce out of bed in excitement to accomplish each day. 

And “work,” or this concept of “vocational transformation,” can be an emotionally complicated idea. It may be easy to check out of this final week of Transformed if you don’t view yourself as fitting into an area in the traditional workplace.  However, I view “work” as a broader concept than the morning commute, the 9-5 or the business owner. I encourage you to do so, also.

While, yes, work is made up of the things I mentioned, it is also school, an internship, stay-at-home parenting/managing of a household, etc. The concepts we learned on Sunday, the small group sessions and the devotional can help us transform the way we view all of these areas of our lives.

Sometimes, we are living the dream. The internship turned into a full time position for a company you really believe in! Your children are thriving and your home is in order! Your business venture has really broken through to the next level!

But more often than we care to think about, work just feels like work.  You feel dispensable. Your kids are struggling to make good choices. You’re not doing fulfilling, fruitful work. And the days start to run together. You feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

The Giants in the workplace loom large:

Delay. When will your dream job finally come to fruition? When will work feel meaningful? When will the day-in-and-day-out of laundry, Cheerios and diapers end?  I went to college for this?!

Discouragement. You were overlooked for the promotion again. Your review was not as “glowing” as you thought it would be. The principal called for another meeting about your child.

 Disapproval.  You got let go for poor performance. Your child was excluded from the play date because he plays too rough. Your group is angry with you because your lack of effort cost them the project grade.

Doubt.  I can’t do this. I’m too old. I’m too young and inexperienced. I’m too exhausted and worn out.

We were given four ways to face the vocational giants in our lives.

1.       Remember how God has helped you in the past.

2.       Use the tools God has given you.

3.       Ignore the “dream busters.”

4.       Expect God to help me for His glory.

While all of these are excellent points, I want to focus on the first one: Remember how God has helped you in the past.

When I first graduated from college and got married, I entered a series of “unfulfilling, low-paying, dead-end, entry level jobs.”  As I type those words, I’m embarrassed. Such ugly words. Because at 22, fresh out of college with no experience, I deserved so much more, right? But that’s how I viewed those jobs at the time. They were “below me.” I was “too educated” for those positions. I was waiting for the better gig to fall in my lap.

The Bible has a few things to say about pride, no? So, I wandered in the wilderness of those jobs while God worked those ugly things out of me and I learned dependence on Him. I look back at that time and reflect on how God helped me. He taught me humility and hard work. He showed me how to be reliable and punctual. He enabled me how to work well with others.

Aaron and I got to a place in our life together where I needed to launch out into a different line of work with a higher salary. So, we began to pray. An opportunity presented itself. I submitted my resume and was called for an interview. The interview seemed promising.

We joked about what the offer would look like. “Wouldn’t it be ridiculous if they offered me $___________?” we laughed. The amount was nearly double what I was currently making.

Several days later, I received the offer.

It was the exact amount we had laughed about.

I worked for that company for almost six years. The boss was generous with raises, flexible with hours, liberal with maternity leave and even transformed my position into a part-time thing with an unbelievable hourly rate so I could be home with my daughter more. That job was a gift-wrapped, hand-delivered present from the Lord.

But of course there were days when the stupid song about the drum played in my head. Management changed. Policies tightened. My job description morphed into something I didn’t like.

And I started to gripe and complain about the manna and quail God had provided. I needed to remember how God had helped me in the past. We forget this so easily.

I need God to help me daily to remember what he has done for me vocationally in the past so that I don’t get blinded by the temporary unpleasantness of the present. My hope is that this week you, too, will learn a significant way to become transformed in your vocational health!

Written by: Jaime Hlavin

Edited by: Tamara Sturdivant