Interactions with God #113

When God has you in boot camp or in the more christianese vernacular, “a time in the wilderness”, all you hope for is the ending. You understand that the purpose of the trial is to make you grow, but who in their right mind really wants to live there all that long? I sure don’t. Day after day, you get up with the hope that just maybe today is the day. The day when things will start to work and people won’t despise you anymore. Sadly, by noon, you already know…”today, is not that day.”

Though 2007 started off hopeful, it ended with a batch of new trouble. My boss, Dick LaForge, who I liked and respected was forced out of HP Software. He was forced out to make room for a buddy of the new President of HP Software. This guy, like many CEO’s and high level management types, brought in his “team” from a prior company. These kind of power plays always leave me scratching my head. I understand the reasons for it, but it just seems more like a high school than how a real life business should run. The guy that replaced Dick was named Wayne and Wayne was one evil dude.

I liked Wayne…at first. He seemed like he had a good vision. He talked a good game. I really believed his ideas would help our department improve. However, Rich, right after meeting Wayne, said he was a snake. Rich was always better at judging the character of people than I was. I even argued with him at first, “No, this guy will be great!” I was wrong. Funny thing though, Wayne loved Rich. Because of that, he shared with Rich his plans to “improve” our team. One of these included getting rid of me.

Here I was again and it still made no sense. I was doing well in my job. I was working well with everyone. This guy just hated me. I had no idea why. At least this time, I wasn’t the only one. He had a list. Wayne liked drama and conflict and created a whole lot of it. Within months, people who had trusted and relied on each other were circling the wagons and raising weapons, ready for a fight. It was really sad to watch. I think the guy watched to many reality TV shows.

Throughout 2008, I walked on eggshells. Due to Rich’s reports, I knew Wayne was just itching for a reason to get rid of me. Yet, he couldn’t find one. Once he even tried to make up something. It didn’t work. I think that just made him more determined. Frustrated over and over, in November of 2008 he finally had an opportunity to get rid of me. Due to the down-turn in the economy, HP had a companywide layoff. Wayne took advantage of it and gave me the pink slip. My last day would be just before Christmas.

During that same year, at the Rowlett Vineyard church, we were still having no luck in making real friendships. Bill and Natalie would do lunch or dinner with us a couple of times, but we still could not get beyond the superficial stages. My kids were beginning to drift away from church interest. None of the youth or youth leaders ever reached out to them. Just before I got the HP layoff notice, Martha and I had already decided to leave the Rowlett Vineyard Church. 

On Tuesday, just after the last Sunday we planned to attend the church, the pastor called and invited me out to lunch for that Thursday. On the call, he even apologized for not making much of an effort to reach out more to me and my family. He blamed that on his efforts to train for triathlons. The timing was odd as the pastor knew nothing of our intent to leave the church, so I accepted his invitation thinking that maybe God would make connections at this church finally work.

At lunch, the pastor started talking about a recent elders meeting. This little church had been struggling financially. Attendance was low and getting worse. During the elders meeting; someone said that they felt the reason the church was struggling was because they were trying too hard to assimilate people. Yea, considering our situation, I almost laughed. I did however disagree with him politely. “Well, that is not quite what Martha and I have found. We have made every effort to assimilate, but have gotten nowhere.” The Pastor then told me that the reason my family could not assimilate was because of me. He actually said that the reason I was not being accepted by his church was my personality. Sadly…I agreed with him.

Sure, I can talk a lot. I have strong opinions, but I am not rude. Yes, I get excited when talking about fun topics so I do tend to get louder. For people who are shy or quiet by nature, I can probably be annoying. Yet, after lunch ended, while on my way home, the Holy Spirit got on my case. He rebuked me for agreeing with this man. I was so ready to find a reason for the way I was treated, that I accepted this man’s garbage. It was then that I felt the anger from the heart of God. How dare anyone claiming to be His NOT accept someone! Whether race, looks, personality or even smell, Christ accepted us, we have absolutely NO ROOM to reject anyone who turns to Jesus…No one!

Of course sinful behavior is another matter. Scripture is clear on that. Sin, at its core is rejecting God. When someone is wrestling with sin, we should definitely help them…very carefully. However, when they are embracing sin, we need to separate from them. As the Apostle Paul clearly taught, the goal of separation is to bring them to repentance. The hope is that due to missing the fellowship of the church people, they will return to God. Unfortunately, because most churches are so superficial, this doesn’t work anymore.

After I got home, I told Martha what the pastor had said and what God had shared with me in the car. She also got mad. She was now very fed up with church people. Though, she did not get the brunt of the rejection over the years, she watched me go through it. I think if the situation had been reversed, I might have handled it much worse than she did. You know, with knives and bullets… I am half-Italian after all. 

After our discussion, we sent the pastor an email letting him know how wrong he was and that we would not be returning to his church. We never got a response from him. Bill and Natalie however, sent a rather angry email blasting us for hurting them.  Yeah, I never understood how my not being accepted by their church, hurt them…

On November 20, my birthday, I was unemployed because my boss hated me. I was also again rejected by a church, this time because of my “personality”. I really needed to understand why I kept running into hatred, rudeness, isolation and dismissiveness. Why so many managers, pastors and church leaders just rejected me for one reason or another. I didn’t do anything wrong to any of them! The whole situation was really bugging me. It was lining up to be one bummer of a birthday. It was, until later that afternoon when my birthday present from God arrived.

I had no job, so I had lots of time. I did do some job searching that morning, but quit early because, well, it was my birthday. I sat on a sofa chair in our family room watching a movie on my work notebook (I didn’t have to return it until the end of December, so I made use of it). While sitting there watching the movie, out of nowhere, I had a vision. I saw a crowd of people standing together in a group. A great hand came down and picked up a man by the head. The hand moved the man away from the crowd and placed him outside at a distance. Then He spoke. “I have taken you out of the crowd and separated you. I have also marked you. I have marked you in such a way that those who hate me will hate you and those who are mine, but yet, are insecure, will be very uncomfortable around you.” 

This is not the kind of thing anyone would ask God to do for them. Yet, strangely, this word from God gave me a huge flood of relief. When so many people don’t like you, even considering the source, you eventually start to believe there is something wrong with you. Well, when you find out that it’s the RIGHT within you that the WRONG people have a problem with…well, that is a BIG relief.