No roller coaster of unemployment

Just after I had my third child, my husband suddenly lost his job. He was let go with a few weeks of severance pay, but we weren’t sure where his next job or paycheck would come from. Besides our concern about how we’d pay our bills and feed our family, we were – like so many Americans – stuck in a mortgage that we’d had no business getting in the first place. The fear of not having enough income reminded me of a steep run down a roller coaster where we couldn’t see the bottom, let alone how to get back up.

During that time, this statement by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Monitor, comforted me: “Trials are proofs of God’s care” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 66). I used to think that that meant God would send us trials, or hardships, and then He would help us get out of the problems. I’ve learned since that the trials we experience come about because we forget that God never sends misfortune to any of us, His children. God knows only harmony, and this is what we are meant to know also. Prayer enables us to restore our consciousness that, as His sons and daughters, we are always innocent and good.

So the trial we were facing wasn’t God sitting in judgment on us. Neither were the lack of a job and the fear of not having enough income to feed our family and to keep our house a punishment. Rather, the trial was actually an opportunity to prove God’s care for us and to learn that we would have everything we needed from Him, even if it did come in a somewhat different form.

While my husband was unemployed, we continued to pray and trust that God would provide the right employment for our family. One of the Bible passages I worked with was “Put me to the test and you will see that I will open the windows of heaven and pour out on you in abundance all kinds of good things” (Mal. 3:10, Good News Translation). I saw that we needed to trust in God and let Him prove that He was the source of our supply and our income, and that He would always meet all our needs abundantly.

I also prayed with the thought that God’s economy must be balanced, and therefore could not include a supply without a demand, or a demand without a supply.

One day my husband’s cousin called to congratulate us on the birth of our new baby. During the conversation, he talked about wanting to expand his remodeling business to another metropolitan area. He needed someone to open and manage the business side of the new office. Even though this was a completely different type of job from what my husband had been doing, he had always been interested in being an entrepreneur. He took the job and started while he was still receiving severance pay, so there was never a lapse in our income. This job did more than supply a paycheck; it was also a perfect example of God’s economy blessing everyone. The job met our need for employment, and my husband supplied the managerial need so his cousin could expand his business.

The new job required us to move to another state. This was at the beginning of the real estate downturn, and we were concerned that we wouldn’t be able to sell our house. I prayed to know that God wouldn’t take us halfway, providing my husband with a job but then keeping us tied to a house. God’s plan was always complete, meeting all our needs, including someone else’s need for a home.

Our house sold within a few months. The sale not only freed us to move, but also freed us from the bad mortgage situation.

No matter what roller coaster we might seem to be on, or how terrifying the situation looks, we can trust God to guide us to the answers we need. Each of us is truly employed under His care. And with His love to guide us, we can prove this spiritual fact right where we are.

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