A few weeks ago, our pastor preached about unjust authority. At the time, I thought it was a great message, but didn’t see any immediate application to my life.

How wise is the God who sees the past, present, and future. He truly knows exactly what we need and when.

Now just weeks later, this message is my lifeline to warding off bitterness and depression.

When I first came to work at Matt’s company, I wasn’t very attached to the job or the company. I had never heard of it before Matt started working there, but my personality is such that I put 110% into anything I do. So the longer I stayed and the more roles I was put into, the more I began to care – not just about my own success, but about the success of the company in general. I would get emotionally upset whenever we didn’t take advantage of opportunities to make more money and to be more successful. I wasn’t paid based on commission, so it honestly had nothing to do with my own sense of reward or compensation. It was just that I had invested myself wholeheartedly into doing my job and doing it well.

So when I heard that I was being let go due to economic cutbacks, I felt disappointed that my hard work didn’t make a difference long-term. But I realized that it was for the best, that indeed, the company did need to save money, and that it would allow me to accomplish some things personally that I hadn’t been doing because I had been working so much.

But then I found out some other things. Like that at the same time I was being told that I would be let go, the entire company was getting a memo that explained what was happening and who was being let go. Some of the people who were affected by this (either through losing a management position or being let go themselves) had heard nothing about it until they were reading the memo at the same time as the rest of the company. We’re not a Fortune 500 company with far too many people to treat them like anything but cattle. We have about 20 or 30 people at most. It would have been logistically easy to personally tell everyone affected about the decision before it was passed out in a company memo.

In addition, I was pretty surprised when I found out that I was the only manager who was actually let go. The rest received different positions, and even people who were supposed to be “below” me on the totem pole were given rearranged responsibilities, but not let go.

I’ve spent multiple night working for this company until 2 am, making images, setting up promotions, writing copy. Working overtime even though I was on a salaried paycheck with no extra compensation for my hard work, just because I knew that it was expected of me to get extra promotions done. I felt almost crazy all of fourth quarter because things were so busy with the holidays. I had tried to get my boss to make decisions about holiday promotions months before the holidays approached, because I knew how crazy it would be if we didn’t have a lot of time to prepare in advance. But as usual, he made up his mind a few days before Thanksgiving weekend about the specific sales we would run. Every day over Thanksgiving week, I worked until past midnight making sure everything was ready to go in time for the next day’s sale.

Meanwhile, several of the people who were not let go during the past two weeks were on vacation, not working a bit. It’s just a job, just a paycheck to many of them. And it hurts that even though I gave more of myself than that, it wasn’t appreciated or rewarded.

So unjust authority means a lot more to me now. I am grateful that God was preparing me and also speaking to me through some timely words at Sunday school the week I found out about the lay-offs. Come what may, my work ethic has to be because of Him, not because of the promise of earthly compensation or recognition.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. Anyone who does wrong will be repaid for their wrongs, and there is no favoritism. -Colossians 3:23-4

For this post, we’re going to answer the questions Angel posed in a recent blog for her work blog, Inspired Faith.

1. How did God reveal His hand and presence in 2009?

A: For me, it was in many small ways throughout the year. It was a fairly tough year spiritually for me, mostly because of my stress from my job at the beginning of the year. I had a lot of pent up anger and frustration that kind of carried over into the entire year. Even now, I find my temper much more easily roused than ever before, and that makes it difficult to be sensitive to the Spirit in daily life. But continuing to stay plugged in at church and with other believers, including my wonderful husband, has helped provide reminders of God’s presence. Just the other night, when I lost my temper, instead of ignoring it and relishing my feelings of anger and frustration as I’ve done so much this year, I felt convicted and asked Jesus to renew my mind again. Not huge revelations or anything, but it’s what I need right now.

M: There have been a lot of job transitioning for me this year.  At the beginning of the year, I started selling gym memberships.  I knew it was going to be a demanding schedule and hard work, but I looked at it more of a stepping stone into a higher role in the gym.  In fact, that’s what the GM told me: if you want to be a department head, then you have to start selling memberships.  Fine, I thought, but I didn’t know what I would have to give up to fit their requirements.  Even though I was told that I wouldn’t have to work Sunday mornings, I found myself scheduled in.  I was at the club six days a week, all evenings.  I was told to essentially lie to customers by saying, “This offer ends at the 15th of the month,” when I knew full and well that it didn’t.  I wasn’t happy, and I began to see the company and people for who they are, not on the pedestal that I put them on.  I’m not saying that I don’t like the company or my former coworkers, in fact the opposite.  The company, in my opinion, has a good mission and vision, and the people who work there work hard and care about what they do.  It’s just that our priorities clashed, and it really wasn’t working out.

So, I had been interviewing in March/April.  I was meeting with some great folks in some great companies. Towards the end of April, I had an interview scheduled with a telemarketing company for a customer service role.  The sticking point was that the only open time slot was during my shift at the gym.  The day before my interview, I went to talk to my boss and we talked about how the job was going for me.  I told him how our priorities were crossed, and he understood.  He asked me, “Do you want to stick with us?” and, on the spot, I told him no (this was big for me, I’m pretty indecisive). That worked for the best, because the next day I found out that it was a working interview (interview, then try out the job,hiring  decision made at the end of the day), and if I went to work at the gym that day instead of the working interview, I wouldn’t have gotten the job.

Unfortunately, the job was in sales at this telemarketing job.  Fortunately, though, I got a call a week later from Simple Truths.  Dan hired me to head up the Social Media campaigns, and that is where I have been ever since.  To sum up, God has been faithful in a recession job market.  He provided me with the right opportunity at the right time, even if it didn’t make sense to me.

2. What was your happiest moment?

A: Maybe TMI, but figuring out sex for the first time. In a non-TMI way, every time Matt and I have deeply connected emotionally.

M: I think my happiest moment of the year was watching Angel walk down the aisle… at Wal-Mart.  Just kidding, at our wedding.  Times like that let me know that I am really blessed.

3. What was your most defeated moment?

A: Lame, but the other night, I couldn’t get my windshield wiper on my car. When Matt and I were cleaning it off before I left for church choir practice and he was going to leave to talk to a tae kwon do school, I accidentally knocked the passenger side blade off. It was snowing that night and so cold, so trying to put it back on wasn’t easy for either of us. I also have a history of frustrating windshield wiper moments. Two years ago, when my blade came off, I accidentally snapped the metal attachment down and cracked my windshield, which later had to be replaced. Last year, I was replacing my wiper blades because the old ones were getting so bad, I almost crashed one day coming home from work in a snowstorm. (I was praying, “Jesus, just help me make it to Target and I’ll buy new wiper blades – I’ll even get the expensive ones.”) So anyway, I was putting the new expensive ones on last winter, and it took forever to get one of them on. I just have a hard time figuring out the mechanics while also freezing my rear off. So the same thing happened again this time. We were both having trouble putting it on. It was dark outside, and our fingers were getting numb from the cold. Finally, I told Matt to go ahead and leave, and I would go inside and watch the youtube tutorial on how to put them on that I watched last year. I watched the video, then went outside and tried again. Nope. Didn’t work. When my fingers were numb again, I came back in and watched another video tutorial. Went out again. Still didn’t work. I was so frustrated (precisely because I know it shouldn’t be hard to put on a windshield wiper blade!) I sat on top of the car, even though there was ice and snow on it and got my pants soaking wet because I was determined to do this simple thing. IT STILL DIDN’T GO ON. I finally came inside sobbing because my entire body was numb, my butt was wet, my fingers hurt, I was going to miss choir practice, Matt wasn’t even home anymore to take over on the installation, and I still hadn’t managed to get the blade on. Stupid reason, but definitely my most emotionally frustrating experience of 2009. The next day, Matt went out and put on the blade in the daylight and got it done in about 30 seconds. I love my husband.

M: I can point to two times, relatively similar.  I’m still processing through them, so forgive me if they’re “duh!” moments for you.  Anyway, both my Mom and Dad have been in the hospital in the last four-week period.  They’re getting older, so it makes sense that they’re running into more health issues than before.  What gets me, though is that the conditions they experience recently have been more lifestyle related than genetics related.  This strikes a chord in me, because I bought them gym memberships, work out with them, and give them nutrition advice ( Am I a doctor? No, but I’ve picked up enough from working at the gym to know the basics).  So, despite my efforts, they are still experiencing health issues that most likely could have been prevented.

I know that I need to respect their boundaries, and my parents will do what they will do.  I can’t force them to work out every day, reduce stress, and eat right.  Deep down, though, it still makes me feel like I’ve failed them.  Like I couldn’t motivate them enough to change their habits and avoid illness. So, that’s where I’m left.  Looking on the bright side, this has been a sobering month, and they’re realizing the need to make some changes.  They are finding their own motivation, and that works out just fine for me.

4. What do you wish you had done more of?

A: Praying.

M: Staying on task.

5. What do you wish you had done less of?

A: Losing my temper.

M: Worrying.

6. What was the greatest book you read?

A: My memory isn’t really good enough to remember which books I’ve read in which year, but I do know one I read this year that was good was The Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam

M: Trust Agents by Chris Brogan

7. What was the most meaningful film you watched?

A: Blindness

M: Food, Inc

8. What song reminds you of 2009?

A: “When I Fall in Love”

M: “Jai Ho”

9. Who was the most influential person you met?

A: Pastor Ross, Pastor Rich, and Bob (some of our leaders at Calvary)

M: Randall Ross

10. What did you do in 2009 that you had never done before?

A: Planned a wedding, got married, lived with Matthew, owned nice pots and pans (thanks to Matthew’s cousins and Leslie

M: Sex!

11. What were you most afraid of?

A: Getting pregnant and the implications that might have for our future plans.

M: Having a baby.

12. What were you most grateful for?

A: Matthew.

M: My wife. And Jesus.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Looks like our goal of posting every week hasn’t been met. How does life get away from you like that? We do intend to keep up with our “deep” posts, but for the sake of writing SOMETHING, ANYTHING to keep our readers coming back for more, here are some not so deep updates.

I (Angel) started working part-time for the customer service department at Matt’s company. It’s been great getting to know the people I work with and having something intelligent to fill my time with after these past two years of work that mainly consisted of trying to convince kids to eat and changing diapers. I also have a newfound appreciation for the people on the other end of those automated “contact us” portions of websites. Though I have to say, our company does a much better job of responding to our inquiries than most of the companies I’ve had to contact. Unashamed plug.

Things have been busy at work for Matt, and he’s also been focusing a lot on wushu (Chinese kung fu) for a competition he competed in last weekend and so he can test for his next rank soon. He got three sweet plaques from doing so well in the competition. And he looked pretty hot too (in my non-martial-arts-oriented opinion).

We have been trying to get our budgeting on track post-wedding and figure out joint finances. Not the most fun way to spend evenings, but a necessity. Especially since I realized that when I hadn’t checked my old checking account in awhile, I had been racking up daily fees for having overdrawn my checkbook from a check I had written but forgot to record in my bank book. Yikes. We’re going to talk to the bank about that and see if there’s any way to get those fees, even some of them, revoked since I had a bunch of money in my savings account that they could have transferred over for me. They did end up transferring the money about a week ago, finally, but not until the account had incurred $200 in fines. Yeah, it would have been nice for them to think of doing that after the first couple of days instead of waiting a month. Or at least to have contacted me to let me know what was happening.

We’ve also been trying to maintain our social lives in the midst of the busyness. We hung out with some friends from Matt’s wushu club this weekend. We watched “The Nightmare Before Christmas” to get ourselves in the fall spirit on Friday night with Matt’s former roommates and co. We had our neighbors over for dinner last week and enjoyed getting to know them and meet some of them for the first time. I love having a husband to meet and greet neighbors with; it’s the best Much less awkward than when you’re a small, vulnerable single female trying to build relationships with strangers who live near you. I read “The Suburban Christian” last year and wished that I could do more connected things with my neighbors, but it just didn’t feel right trying to do that with our single male neighbors. Confusing signals tend to happen a lot in our culture with male/female interactions, and I have to say it’s nice being married and not having to deal with quite as many of them.

Okay, that was about as deep as this post is getting. One final update: we’ve been thinking a lot about what we’re going to try and do next year. A few options are on the table, so please pray for us to have wisdom as we seek God’s will for our next step and when to take it.

Welcome to our blog! We decided to start a new blog together for a few reasons: 1) to have a record of the exciting, early days of marriage 2) to have a forum to discuss issues we’re concerned about and interested in 3) to engage old friends and new friends in those discussions. Some of the issues we’ll be discussing are environmental stewardship, sexuality in the Church, and interpersonal communication. We would also love to have ideas on topics, so please submit any ideas or questions!

Our first post will be a cursory introduction, mainly directed to those who don’t know one or both of us, but also to give those of you we haven’t had chance to catch up with in awhile an update on our current lives.

We were married this summer on August 1. After a honeymoon at a rental house on Lake Michigan’s shore in southern Michigan, we settled into a new apartment in Naperville, IL. We love the community we’re living in and look forward to making new friends here.

Since the beginning of the summer, I (Matt) have been working as the Social Media Marketing Specialist for Simple Truths, a company that publishes inspirational books and movie clips. I get to do fun stuff like maintain our company’s Facebook fan page, blog, and Twitter account. I’ve also really enjoyed getting to know my co-workers. I really take pride in who I work for and what I’m doing.

I (Angel) am in a bit of a hiatus as I trust God for the next step in my career path. After graduating from Wheaton with a rather useful degree in English literature, I took several part-time baby-sitting positions. Before the wedding, I was baby-sitting about 50 hours a week and finding that the charm of children (or perhaps playing the weird role of “nanny” in children’s lives) was beginning to wear off. After some hopefully providential words of advice, I am beginning to pursue a master’s in counseling psychology. I am currently taking prerequisites at a community college and baby-sitting part-time for a couple of awesome kids who still have charm.

A few other random facts about us: We have an odd, lazy, old dachshund named P.S. We are multi-racial and multi-cultural. (Matt is 6% white, 6% black, and the rest Hakka Chinese. His parents were born and raised in Jamaica, and he was born and raised in Wheaton, IL. Angel is pretty much all white with a touch of Native American and was born and raised in LaPorte, a small town in Northwest Indiana.) We want to live in Hong Kong for various reasons. I’m sure we’ll chat about that at some point on our blog. We love China. We love the Middle East. We love learning about people and cultures and God. We like watching episodes of “The Office,” “Lost,” and “Batman.” (Okay, Angel doesn’t get into “Batman” so much, but she’s happy to read a book while Matthew watches it next to her.) We try to eat organic and natural food as much as possible. We’re learning how to live a “green” life, not because it’s trendy, but because Angel is paranoid about humans causing the end of the world (and dreams about it often).

We look forward to blogging with you!