Looking back over my life during my 20's I have experienced a lot of change, several moves, and several up's and downs. I moved from everything I've known, left the comforts of "home" and ventured out into several colleges. I had to let go of a childhood dream, changed career plans, had my heart broken, dealt with rejection, and even started to watch my hair fall out at an early age. Most of my adult life has been rough. On July 20th it was no different. I was let go from my job, from the only source of income for my family, just three weeks after my baby girl was born. I can't explain the overwhelming sense of utter loss, utter failure, utter despair that crept into my body.
Just six months ago, I packed up my wife and I and we moved from Texas to San Francisco to work from the office of this small start up company. This was going to be our third state in three years of marriage. I received a raise, and was making more than I ever thought I would make. We were extremely excited to get to experience city life, and truly start establishing our family the way we felt God leading us to. We were sad to leave behind family, friends, and an incredible church, but the excitement of a great job, a raise, and getting to work in a city like San Francisco was exciting to say the least. We had just bought a house not but a year ago in Texas, and were sad to leave it behind, it was our first home that we bought, but God was gracious to let us keep it as a rental and allow us to move quickly. Life seemed exciting and adventuresome all at the same time. We packed up the U-Haul and traveled across the US, excited about what lied ahead.
I'm not sure that any woman could understand exactly what goes on in a man's life, the things that travel through our brains and the things that we see as extremely important and worth our time and effort. God gave us incredible responsibility. I don't take that lightly. He gave us great position in the world, along with the responsibility to provide for my family, to lead my family towards Christ, to make final decisions, to walk in faith, to discipline my children, to love my wife like He loves the church, to live in such a way that my wife and children would see the grace of Jesus. Really, it's an incredible weight that a man must carry. I don't for one second think we are created to carry this alone, but sometimes I must confess it feels that way. Sometimes the weight of the "world" gets heavy, dense, and tiresome and I see my huge need for a God, a Christ, and supplier to carry the load for me. It's hard when your plans don't go the way you want them to. It's hard when what you find worth in is taken from you. It's hard when control is taken out of your hands. It's hard to look at your wife holding your newborn baby, and pray and hope for her to understand, to wait on the Lord, and continue to love you even though you don't have a job. (She has by the way been incredibly gracious and trusting, not once making me feel any way but supported. Ashley is a gift to me and she shines brighter in my life when times like these come.)
I've had my good days and bad. Overall, the power of the Holy Spirit has been incredibly powerful and glorious. I can say that through all of these heartache, I've grown, what God said would happen has. My plans truly would bring about my destruction, and even glimpses and glimmers of hope are worth praising Christ for. I know myself, I know my knee-bent reactions to fear and anxiety, to panic, to force myself to get over it and not be real with my emotions and how I feel and trust that God is big enough for the reality of my heart.
I've cried more in my early adulthood than I ever thought I would in my entire life. I have confessed to my wife that as a man that makes me feel weak. As men we don't do well with our emotions, most of the time we deny we have any at all. We shortchange ourself and the work God is doing because we deny that we are hurt, scared, and fearful of how it will all work. I guess through everything that I've gone through, those barriers, those walls have started to fall, but it's never easy to cry like a baby in front of the one whom you want to be seen as strong. Again, I have an amazing wife who loves me, affirms the strength God gave me and tells me I'm more of man to her for being real, open, and honest.
I have to admit that I feel the worst around other men. It's wired. Everyone in my life has been more than gracious and helpful in these times, but the reality is I don't want to see another man. A man with a job, who is supplying for his family. There is something in us that makes us compare our value to the job that we have. How sinful, how unrighteous. Forgive me father. I think losing my job has revealed this to me. What will they think? How will they respond? What will they say? It's amazing how quickly I can gain value from other things. How I will put my stock in jobs, looks, talents, and material things. God wants more, God gives more, God is all about my joy. I'm learning how many things I turn to to try to find worth and value. Lord help me.
JTH
If I were to truly trust that God is fully in control, fully sovereign, fully capable of providing me with my needs. If I was to let him be God and quit trying to play God myself. If I was to believe that his ways, plans, workings, decisions, timing, and execution of it all is for my good, my joy, and his glory. If the created knew their place, if I trusted the one who holds my very breath in his hands, wouldn't I act different? Wouldn't I live different? Wouldn't I love different? Wouldn't I see my daily life different? 
