Telling a Story

It's 11:00 the night before you read this, and I've been staring at the computer for a while, trying to figure out what to say.

I had a plan in place, but it didn't pan out for today. Maybe next week.

So I resorted to Pinterest for ideas, and after about twenty minutes of searching, I settled on this one:

Tell a story.

And isn't that blogging at its most basic level, anyway?

So here's my story for you today.

Yesterday I started a new job.

If you've been reading around here very long, you know that each experience of life is a huge deal to me. Birthdays are national holidays. There are not just anniversaries to observe, but there are monthiversaries as well. I have been known to literally jump up and down for joy when Ryan arrives home from work.

Starting a new job? That's huge! Every new job is saturated with unknown potential and the opportunity to carry life-changing moments. New spaces. New people. Hours of learning.

When I started my job at the radio station back in 2011, I walked in on the first day to find colorful flowers on my new desk, a freshly created manual to guide me through my days, and even a coffee-scented candle burning brightly in the office. Lynne and Jamie took me out to lunch to celebrate my arrival, and the plant I brought from my old office perished in my car because I forgot to bring it inside on the hottest of July days.

This first day was so much different. I asked Ryan to take my first-day-of-work picture before I left home, and he did. I stood in our living room with a work bag, a lunch bag, a purse, a travel mug of coffee, and a multi-fruit smoothie balanced between my left and right sides.

I walked into work - a place so familiar, because I've spent the last twelve weeks there - and yet brand new, because now I'm learning yet another job.

I didn't need introductions to co-workers, because I already know and love them from these last three months together. I knew where to put my lunch in the fridge, and I didn't have to take a tour of the building.

I also don't have a desk. Not yet. No place to put fresh flowers or a candle - or my purse and work bag. I borrowed a corner of an office to make a luggage pile and grabbed a notebook to start learning new tasks.

I found out about an hour before my next-to-the-last day of work earlier this week that there would be an opportunity for me to stay on, working a cobbled together job that is highly likely to change in appearance over the next several months. In the short term, I'll still be an administrative assistant - but in a different part of the office. I'll be serving a different set of pastors and doing different tasks. I'll be taking the place of someone who is going back into retirement, and I'll have about four more days with her to learn what she does.

When I'm not doing those tasks, I'll be continuing with small group and women's ministry work, and when you add all those things together, they'll make a full-time job.

So yesterday was my first day. I pulled up a chair to the desk that will be mine in a few days and secretly drooled over all the space I'll have to lay out projects and dream up ministry details. That room holds promise and potential. I can just feel it.

I don't have a multi-page manual in a three-ring binder, but I have a handful of pages of notes in a file folder. I don't even have a job description written out fully yet. There are so many questions and much unknown about what is to come.

But it is provision. And I am so very grateful for it. It is a chance to work in the calling God has on my life, and I am thankful.

First days aren't always filled with pomp and circumstance. (But when your first day falls in the same week as the time change, the full moon, Friday the 13th, and the arrival of a pandemic, you make your own celebration on your own time, because let's face it: people are busy.)

In time, I'll have a desk, a job description, a new vase of fresh flowers, access to my email, and a picture of Ryan to gaze at throughout the day. For now, though, I hang onto the promise and provision of it all.