Transition From Losing A Job; click here to listen

Jesus many losing hand trying to find one feels more like a losing battle when something done, request no. I know that there are times that I saved an exciting show you go yes I'm that every time but this one really is in for a lot of different reasons.

We have one of the founding members of the McInerney radio show and a great friend of ours in an early guy. It's the smartest guy in the room… Put pressure on you taught me yearning smart to say right now. Wow, thank you for that great introduction.

It's like putting on an old shoe. So yes, I'm comparing you guys to smelly footwear that odds with us today and and and really am excited about the topic by Messerli for what the topic is. But for the changes they can help in our lives that there there's a lot of things will talk about today that I think everybody can relate to in one form or another, and so in the room today with Vinnie and Al and Robby and Todd, myself, and so you hear if one of us at different times, but I want to go to a clip pretty quickly and just think about the word transition when you have to transition from one thing to another as you listen to this clip. There were no suicides on Wall Street that day is a myth that would grow over time.

The real affect of October 29 took a little longer to sink in. By noon. All the games of the previous year had been obliterated by 4 PM.

Nearly $10 billion of market value was gone. Over the next two weeks. The hemorrhage continue and before long, 25% of the work was unemployed.

A great national migration began displaced families talk to the American Highway in the last session remained there and all it wants millions and a new definition of, as you listen that obviously you think about it depresses me about bump that up that's really exciting so right that it was but you really think about transition.

It's very obvious you know anything about the Great Depression there were a lot of transitions but we all face them from time to time taught. Isn't that something that you and what you've done for living that people deal with the most is transition as a life it's come to counseling for that and one thing that I'm going through right now. Is there a work transition. I was unexpectedly laid off from my job that was not that I was at for 12 years and it was a disruption that I just totally did not expect and God's help me walk through that share some things that I know he's teaching me the process and I want to come back to that because there's a lot I want to hear from you on this because I really think that the listeners are going to gain much insight to some places that the God had you, but wondered transition sound a little bit like this do you just let me just say as I eased out of the office. I helped build. I'm sorry that there is such a thing as manners way of treating people. These fish Mentors.

These fish have members in fact coming with me.

I'm starting a new company and the fish will come with me.

Call me sentimental fish there coming with me. Okay if anybody else wants to come with me.

This moment will be the moment of something real and fun and inspiring. In this god forsaken days and we will do it to get coming with was coming with me. Besides Flipper here. This is embarrassing Wendy Joey three months away from the pain. Okay, okay until the reason one to lighten the mood, but there's probably a lot in that clip.

The going through that type of transition that that really touches on you know what Jerry McGuire does and that clip is he really shows all the different emotions that you have during instruction like this and yeah you do want to flip out. Yes, you have given your heart and soul to the place were used to work and it feels like a disloyal thing that the company is doing at my cousin who I love dearly. She won the first thing she told me she sits on. It's really not a bad thing. It just feels that this is really going to be a good thing. It's hard to believe that the moment you do want to flip out and take this with you and then you want to turn around and throw the fish at the person who but God comes in and that's where we have to really get our wits about us and say okay there's gotta be a purpose for the disruption and and get focused on the transition part is hard and in at some level, that's gotta feel like a betrayal right that you know someplace where I poured a lot of my time and a lot of my effort into and you just as he could before marriage. It could be for relationship. It could be for lots of things and so were talking primarily today about some transitions regarding employment, they do apply to all of us in different transitions because there are lots of disruptions that happen in life yeah and and we as men and women do this to that men especially all the things that that we transition from day we allow them to become our identity, like when the disruption happens, I will. Who am I now and it really makes those most important things rise to the surface.

In those least important things, settle, and you can say okay why did I put so much of my identity and that is why I need to check under the hood of my feelings only about this other than you know. I need to provide for my family and but what, what's with this. What's with this anger and what's with the whole piece about who I am now not Robby with her things were to ask you about was something that you you love to talk about is his disruptions right so these are obviously from enemy right it did look that way for Jerry. You know, and it's it's kinda interesting to try to identify the enemy because it, looks like all those employees that you really thought, who's with me and find out almost immediately that you don't make any impact on always people around you that you thought you were making, and so the enemy starts to look like the guy that let you go or the company that let you go or the other people that you thought for sure working up support you in some way come to your aid and those kind of things and then there is the enemy that obviously had his role in it, but then where you find on and there is the interesting challenge. So I think Robby that's a great point that have you ever noticed when a guy loses his job.

He can tell you the story about why he lost his job.

What rotten scoundrels let him go you get this whole story around it about what happened and why it happened and how they screwed me over and blah blah blah and what God wants us to do this he really doesn't want that to be the narrative of the story because that's really not who we are in him. He wants the story to become what I'm doing in you now. Through this disruption. That's what that's the story he's trying to building use that you will tell that you definitely want you to live in that smaller story, but there's also a goal of his to make in attic God in the midst of this is all you know the uncertainty of being unemployed or going through any transition is sometimes more than you can bear.

It really is the uncertainty of it and not not mean I got two kids at home. Have a beautiful wife and I had the greatest job I ever had making the most compensation the best compensation package I've ever made. And when all that was yanked out from under me in I want to say will wait a minute God had hundred 50 employees under me. I had a $26 million budget. I had a lot of influence and I was doing a lot of good for you and all this. What's up with that thought that's what you want me to do and so yeah sometimes there's some anger in the enemy wants to come at you and say you know God said he wanted you there, but evidently wasn't telling. Gotta have my back here yeah what happened you been going through a transition in your life.

Talk a little bit about that.

There's some wrestling with you know what's the enemy here is the enemy God is what talk about that the transition if I don't think the enemy is God by no means I'm thinking of a real funny story that happened to me but my first wife, Rita know we needed for nothing. Just like Todd.

He was lucky and I was lucky because the house and all that Rita to occupy herself because we had children and one was in the service at the time she took a job in the bakery just to keep busy and I come home one day and she is throwing things around the house. What what's called nauseous. I just got fired. Okay, so what she says well I needed the $24 is one $24 and I told her I sent you not to get anywhere is anger.

This is calm down and let's talk about this. My point is that when you get fired the first reaction. I believe that anybody is anger from anger becomes despair.

That's the biggest part of the unemployed is despair, I can't find all this talk about that. It had a great job any good and I was going when you get into this despair type of life problem talk more about that transition and what God does through that doesn't leave you in despair, maybe a step we go through the depiction part of life and share a lot about what's been happening for him more about our ministry go to mass and journey radio.org how do you mean like you were leaving a diverse community where people from the backrest. The same neighborhood.

To learn more about how the fair housing act diversity visit HUD.gov/fair housing, fair housing act for discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status message partnership with the National fair housing Alliance. Let's go inside the mind of a 10-year-old getting to the kids job to make sure the wedding is a message from the National Highway traffic safety station in the car.gov/for more information. At one point or another in it and there's this despair that he was talk about that can come on and talk where you go from that place. Yeah, I think you have any talk about the anger that comes in and the despair that comes after that. I think mixed in with all that is anxiety and pressure, and that's really a fear-based reaction and so what we try to do is we panic out of fear and we try to re-create what we just came from and the disruption that was about not being where you just came from, but we think we have to in order to provide for our family and to all those wonderful things we need to do is man think what God is teaching me so far and I tell you I'm halfway through this you will halfway out of it's halfway or not part of the way into this.

I haven't found another job yet but what is teaching me so far is this is that I want you to not act out of fear or panic anymore and I'm going to teach you how to trust me in a new way. It's not like I never trusted God before but it's like he's saying I want you trust me in the way and I want you to go through this disruption with peace with actual peace because if there's fear and panic doesn't come from God's throne. He wants his love and his peace to come in through this process so you know we we kind of want to react and put plans together and meet people and do things in not saying all this things we shouldn't do, but he's saying okay why don't you just walk with me each day and see what the next step is to day because there's so many prayers, I think me and pray like God. What you will. God, what is it you want me to do. Where do you want me to be at. That's kinda like a futuristic prayer like were asking God to predict the future and tell us in all he's saying is, and this is what he says in his word. I'm going to reveal to you today. What you need to do today. You know why is I want you to do it with me as if I tell you what happened a week or two or a month from now to take off and go do it. He didn't say give us this day our weekly bread exactly.

And you know what that does. It builds trust with him and it makes that fear and that panic at least unite it you can you can go somewhere with I don't know. I think I made my best decision the life out of fear and panic that I really haven't absolutely but yeah right that's with the enemy want you to go to when you can walk to that piece you growing up.

Trust in God, but another thing you get is the enjoyment of the day yeah yeah because initial focus on the future annexing you know months gone years gone for you know Robby's case, 50 years gone now just a long time for me as I was listening to Todd. I use this clip last week I had to redeem myself after the Barbie clip this week. I have a clip from fury. A real man anyway.

Fascinating is a war movie and and there's this huge transition that comes on the board. He supposed to be a typist or clerk annexing you know he could stroll into this tank and he knows how to type on hundred and 60 words a minute but has no idea how to shoot 160 rounds a minute, which is his new job and you know there really given it to him and he's really the fascinating thing is I was listening to Todd talk about a kid that had no peace because as he's asking being asked to kill Germans in all the stuff that goes on in that movie. He's really struggling because he has absolutely no peace. But as he embraces what it is that his new role is in embraces what God has form in the midst of the phenomenal ending of the movie, which I will not spoil it for you.

There is the only place where you see him have peace and his job is only making a dollar 35 that you can't get worse and can and will call their assist driver school that's home side will that that literally they find themselves at a crossroad movie and it is literally five against 300 but as you watch the whole movie. These people becoming a band of brothers in the and when you finally find peace between these men is when they're totally engaged in this. In the end they now have peace in the midst of this battle, that's absolutely phenomenal because they've stepped into the role I got to ask you a question through some of this disruption in this transition become an opportunity to read this. A passion what you're passionate about nothing.

Passion about what you did.

I know you were know you very well, but to redefine that maybe yeah, you have sitting on your couch in the middle of the afternoon when you should be out there working gives you a different perspective and one of the things that can arise as to the top is what I've been doing for 12 years. Is that really what I want to be doing. It's what I know to do but what if God is disrupting all this because he's going to get me to a place where I can do even more of what my passion is so yeah, kinda causes you to rethink you know what you want to do and where you want to go so I absolutely say I mean again when I listen for God's voice each day. There was someone that came to me and said you know Todd don't forget that through the all this process and now you're under pressure you try to figure it out. Now that God really wants to do what he always wants from anyone any day. He just wants to see your heart once you open up your heart tell you exactly how you feel as I did that and in the next day I had another person call me.

That said, Todd, don't forget God wants to know what you want in your heart to start praying about what you would like nothing. God is the father. That way I can see that all through Scripture that just like a father turns to his son or his daughter. He doesn't just tell them how they're going to live every single instant of their life. He, looked at them sometimes is what you want to do. Yet he enjoys the smile that comes on their face, and he wants to hear their passion and got the same way it kinda looks down. This is yeah I know what's best for you, but what you want to do is do it together was build something together and you know what when you're doing that each day you know when your you understand that a blade of grass grows a days growth in today's time and over. Time is you're doing that. You begin to build trust in what he you and him are going to do together. And that's when that to me.

The anxiety and the fear starts going away want to ask you a quick question.

I know that there's been some transition time for you when you had to rely on that trust. You are a job for a lot of years right and you had to take a step out and what you find when you trust what actually there's a story before that because before that job.

I never held a job for more than a year. Never in. There was, I would get to the point where I had anxieties that attacked me all the time. So by the time a year start to come around to get all this anxiety. Things were going on and I couldn't keep a job and I got to the point where I just said this next job. If it doesn't work out I was going. I'll be homeless and I was there for 20 years and it was a great transition because I was 30 years old. I was making yeah 30 years old, make it seven bucks an hour I had to have part-time jobs help me make ends meet.

But then as I grew in that job. It turned into an IT job that turn into a network tech job I had a career had no college, no training and I was miserable.

I there were so many people there were people that I liked and I enjoyed working with. I was for the majority of the time I was miserable. I hated that job and I prayed and prayed and prayed to get for God to give me something new and I got to the point where I just relented. I surrendered and he would ask me what defines you. I had no answer for the longest time I had no answer and then it came to a point where my faith in him. When I started reading my Bible every day and I started praying when the constant basis.

I realized it wasn't my job to define me was my wife.

It wasn't my children. It was my relationship with him. That's what define me.

When I would go with that. That's when it that's when someone approached me for a job and it's turned out to be the most joyful, fulfilling job I've ever had, so I can't feel guilty when you know we get when I see other people going through this because I know it was like earlier, but you never want to rest on part of this whole transition is that whole identity thing it's rediscovering your identity in any transition in on so how important is it the anchor yourself in the correct identity as you walk through these difficult times.

Yet we get so emotionally attached to whatever's around us that it naturally becomes our identity. If were not careful and so these disruptions call that into question because it's not there anymore that old job is not there anymore. The old position. I had 150 employees. I had under me the position I had the $26 million budget. I was able to oversee the autonomy that I have much. I mean, it does not there anymore so who am I and guys really call that into question the say well you know what is your identity is in me now.

Isn't it in something more solid than a job and you know that's that's been a great reminder and I think what what he showing me again is don't put your identity and things that can change and that identity I just want to take off on August the little while box sitting on the couch feeling useless. I don't know most you people out there know that I'm losing my sight on virtually blind, and that's what I do. I sit on the couch and for the first couple months you see in black boy you know feeling sorry for yourself little by little Todd hundred percent explained.

I realize that every step was taken out of the darkness.

I was stepping in light like on me this major major problem that I got I got big Gail is my real man you know no matter where you are.

Your identity is not in the role you play and I think that's the thing that we do sometimes assume on that. Yes you are. I am an employee. Yes, I am the son out of my husband put your identity in God and if you're not sure, go back to him with little or transition not see you next week