Day of the Ghost

I would like to share what today retrospectively looks like from my corner of the woods.

It started off like any other work day, except that I had a plan to take the van into the shop, and that one event kept popping up in my thoughts. But when I got to work, a strange day quickly began to unfold. The first person I saw, a woman named Teri who was spraying castings with glow-in-the-dark solution, looked at me with surprise and said, "Are you still here? Well, I'm glad, but I heard that you got laid off." Well, this was news to me, but the way things sometimes go at my work is that I find out more from the hourly folks than I do in my own group.

Five minutes later it happened again. A guy saw me in the hall and whispered over my shoulder, "I heard you got the axe today!" I assured him that I was there until I wasn't, but I was beginning to doubt. Well, then I went into the wax department, and about four people asked me if I was still there. "I'm still here," I said. People kept looking at me like they'd seen a ghost. Two people even said they thought they were seeing a ghost or the walking dead.

If there were ghosts that walked the earth, I think I can relate to them better now, because I got a lot of weird glances and stares - even shocked expressions! In all, about twenty people either told me they heard I was canned or they called my desk to see if I would answer, and to their shock, I did answer.

My boss told me I was mentioned in a meeting along with many others for the people that got laid off last Friday, but that for now I was not to worry. "Tell them they can't believe everything they hear, " he said.

It is evident that I did still have a job at the end of the day, and so did Stephanie - a woman that everybody thought had quit to take an insurance selling job. The "rumor mill" can be a very powerful thing. I later thought about it and decided that if anyone else tells me they heard I got canned, then I will just tell them that if they don't want me to be, then they should tell their supervisors what a good job they think I'm doing.

It was a sobering and ominous experience. But I wasn't really afraid of being let go. Some people really did look at me as though they had seen a ghost. Well, I figure God is in control of the situation more than what anyone else decides. It had that feeling like I found out the day I was going to die, or that I had a week to live, or something like that. I guess to wherever someone works they like to think they can't be replaced - that no one could ever do their job. But the truth is we are all expendable. Someone else could do our job, even the boss, and do it well. I'll just keep on trusting God that he'll be in control no matter what happens. Regardless of the job I do, I work for God alone. I merely express my work to my employer. God has a much higher standard than any boss I've ever known. Yet He is the perfect boss. We just can't let work be our identity. It's not who we are. It's just part of what we do.

I wonder what tomorrow will be like. I'm already praising God that the van won't need nearly as much work as I thought it would. I've been praying about it for about a week. Praise God for being trustworthy!