I was given a special gift this summer. It was a gift wrapped in confusion, angst, and no small amount of supplication. It was a gift that at first appeared like a looming thunderstorm but is steadily turning into clearer waters. It is something that's still working itself out and can't really be described with a single word.
After struggling with the reality of job loss last June, I had a difficult time processing what had happened. I felt like I was betrayed, let down, misled. During my escapes, my runs through the Cascades, my rides across pristine pastureland, toxic thoughts about my last job kept spilling into my tranquility. If God made my hands to work, and to do good for His kingdom no matter where I was, how could this have happened? Didn't He provide this job for me just seven months ago?
The last day I returned home from that job, with all of these emotions spreading around, there, in the storm, was still a very real sense of peace, an antidote to reasonable panic. I knew things were going to be ok, and not in a sentimental, "oh, things just work out" kind of a way, but a very real, "Marcus, I've got you and I'll never leave you" type of assurance. It has not been an easy path to peace for me, but I knew the only way to move on was to forgive and allow that event to be in my past.
By His grace, one of our friends offered to refer me to a resort Bar/Restaurant half an hour south of our new home. My finances would be covered for the summer.
Never would I have thought that a year after leaving Active Duty service would I be waiting tables, but I know it's temporary, and, as I'm learning, was very intentional for my faith journey. It turns out, He can use us for His good anywhere. I think, whether I wanted to acknowledge it or not, I was seeking joy in the company that I work for and the results I produce. I knew I had to depend on Him to secure a job when we first moved to Bend, I've experienced what it's like to wait on the Lord for His promises; winter of 2014, I had about eight months of time I had to wait for the Army to finally move me to Fairbanks so I could join my wife, but that's another story. But now the Holy Spirit is teaching me a difference kind of dependence. If my joy is based on the work my hands are doing, then my heart and affections are not towards Christ.
1 John 5:12 tells us, "Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life." Life, and by extension, joy and other fruits of the Spirit, is not based on what material things/jobs or even human relationships we have; it's all about our relationship with the Son. Period. And in my daily struggles to find His purposes in delivering an unreasonable amount of ranch dressing to hungry tourists to go with their fries, I find I can have this joy so long as I learn to delight myself in His Word, commit my steps to His instruction, and trust in the Lord and do good. And now and again, I'll catch glimpses of the Holy Spirit's nature when I see the joy in a child's eyes when the Oreo milkshake arrives to the table.
As I'm learning to find joy simply in my relationship with Christ, I gain daily assurance that He is not done with me and that He put desires in my heart for a reason. I felt so fulfilled after returning home from USAT Nationals because the entire weekend, I got to do what I'm so passionate about: race and help others in the military race. Even when my day job consists of wiping tables and mopping floors with an engineer degree in my back pocket, I'm still so privileged that triathlon is still such a prominent part of my story.
As the summer is drawing to a close, I know that the Lord has something just over the hillside that I would have never expected. I don't know what that is yet, but neither did Gideon just before he delivered Israel from the vast Midionite army with the odds stacked impossibly against him. After all, "do not be anxious" was a command, not simply and admonishment, because "the Lord knows you need these things."
