When God shows up...

I recently got in touch with an old friend, Larry Wilson, who's been struggling to find work as and editor/writer. After years of steady fulltime and freelance writing gigs, Larry suddenly found himself without work to support his new wife. For over a year he's been praying...and suddenly this week God showed up.

This made me start thinking about God, and waiting, and my recent experience with God showing up. I left my fulltime corporate job at the end of May to pursue freelancing -- again. Yes, I've been in this place so many times. This is my third time in the freelancing world. Hopefully I'm here for good this time. But you never know. Anyway, when I left in May I was confident I would have steady freelancing work right away. I had developed many contacts while at my corporate job and was assured of work by several of these contacts. I felt it was time to leave the security of the corporate paycheck and to "shake things up". My job was going well, but creatively and spiritually, I felt dead in my grey cubicle. I felt like if I didn't take this chance to launch out on my own again, with three months of severance pay to help me get started, that I would be in the corporate world forever. And I wanted to get back to writing things that had meaning. My goal was (and is) to find a balance between great-paying marketing / web site / advertising writing, and not-so-great paying articles and books that have meaning.

In all of my times of freelancing, I've learned that being self-employed forces you to trust God...and that often he doesn't show up until the last minute. I've been getting work, but not as much as I thought. All summer I had times when I was busy, but then would have 2 weeks or more with no work. In the past few months I've been wondering how in the world David and I would pay the huge chunk of taxes we'll owe Uncle Sam on April 15. I was working enough to help pay the bills, but not enough to save the money we need for April. Then, last week I got a call about a freelance job. They need a steady freelancer for 20 hours a week for the next four months. Their goal? To get all of this work done by April 15. Tax Day. Hmmmm. Frederick Buechner once wrote that we have a choice. We can either chalk these types of things up to coincidence, or God. I choose to see them as God working in my life.

No, it's not very exciting work. But it's work that will allow me to relax about money for awhile so I can write the things I want to write about. Last week I also got a call from a Christian magazine that wants to publish an article I sent them. It's the first step in getting back into the publishing world...the Christian publishing world which I, to be honest, turned my back on for several years.

It seems the older I get, and the longer I'm on this Christian journey, the periods of waiting are longer. But I've found that while I'm in the desert, I've become more trusting. Because it seems without fail, God does show up one way or another. Maybe not in the way we expect, but he's there. And in the end my faith has grown.