A Time to Dance

I've been looking for a job since January. After I got rejected by Fulbright (I take alternate status as rejection!), I upped my ante. I've applied for over 30 jobs, and I only heard back from ONE. In the entire state of Georgia, there were THREE public high school history positions. In private schools, there were about 6. For those reading this who don't believe in God, let me just tell you that getting this job proves he exists. Let me explain.

I had a phone interview from Whitefield Academy in March, but then I heard nothing until mid-May, when I got a phone call for another phone interview. The school then asked me to come in for a day of interviewing, which I didn't think went all that well. Tucker and I have since been, well, freaking out. If you don't secure a teaching job by August, you have to wait another year to find one! So, we've been like that toddler in the grocery store who hurls himself in the middle of the aisle and flails about, screaming and wailing that he's not getting the race car he wants. We were feeling orphaned by God, but we were still praying for very specific things job-wise.

Here's the good part. I got a call during breakfast with a friend this past Thursday, and I actually put off checking my messages because I was pouting and convinced that God had abandoned me and therefore that I didn't get this job (talk about acting childish!). So I go check my voicemail, call the school's headmaster back, and he says, "We'd like to offer you the position." I literally responded incredulously, "Seriously?!"

God handed us on a silver platter what we've been praying for, down to the smallest detail of dental insurance. Here's why we're dancing in our household, praising God for his goodness and sovereignty:

1. There were over 100 applicants for this position at Whitefield. 
2. To my knowledge, I was one of a very few (if any other) females interviewed.
3. They were very interested in hiring a history teacher who could also coach, and let's face it, I'm no olympic athlete. 
4. All their other candidates were called in to teach a sample lesson for the administrators. I didn't get to do this because they interviewed me so late. 
5. I STILL GOT THE JOB.
6. The salary and benefits package they offered me is EXACTLY what we've been praying for, down to the EXACT salary amount we needed to feel financially stable enough to move with only one of us having job security. I'm talking to the thousand of dollars. Ridiculous.
7. We visited Smyrna, GA on Friday, and we LOVE the revitalized down-town and surrounding neighborhoods. It's like a mini-Augusta Road area in Greenville. 
8. I get to teach 11th and 12th graders EUROPEAN history. 

Now, a rational person just cannot chalk that up to "coincidence" or "luck" or  simply "hard-work paying off." This is a living, breathing product of God's sovereignty. Like Ecclesiastes says, for every season there is a time to dance, and we sure did make a quick turn-around in our household from mourning/pouting to dancing!

I'm not a prosperity-gospel kind of person, so don't take this posting to mean "I'm a christian, and therefore God gave me everything I wanted." Remember how I really wanted Poland? God certainly slammed that door shut, and I was pretty mad about it. Now that I'm on the other side, I see that these last 3 months of stress, heartache, anxiety, anger, depression, and sense of abandonment was a product of us not trusting the Lord's faithfulness while he was working out something even better. On the Monday before I got the job offer, we were literally in the darkest depths of the pit of discouragement. Then, it's as if God said, "Erika and Tucker, I love you so much and have been working all of this out for you. Chill out. I've got it covered." I'm sure God would be much more eloquent than that though hah.

Anyway, the point is, God is sovereign and good, even when I'm too busy pitching a fit to realize it.