I was talking to a friend the other day and we came to the realisation that this new season of my life isn't just a turning to a new page, but a whole new book altogether.
Even though I tried not to think about it in those exact terms, I had spent my first four years in Aotearoa as a missionary because my funding came from overseas (I know the term "missionary" means a lot more than that, but globalisation and all that--ask me about it another time). But this year marked a huge transition. It wasn't just a year of discerning what's next with The Bridge, it was also the year I'm transitioning out of "missionary" status--and not just because I got married to a Kiwi bloke. No, it's also the year I'm transitioning into doing things the way local ministers would.
For most local ministers, being bi-vocational is the only way for ministry to be healthily sustainable unless, of course, we are with one of the bigger denominations. (But this isn't a conversation about denominational affiliations--feel free to ask me about this in a different conversation). And while I had known this since starting up The Bridge back in 2014, it wasn't until June this year that I finally had a work visa that would allow me to work outside of the religious organisation that sponsored my Religious Worker visa.
Nearly three months after I received that work visa and at least 30 job applications later, I'm still unemployed. At the advise of a friend, I went to a recruitment agency and managed to get this close to securing a job, only to receive a phone-call last Friday to say the organisation had decided to hire someone else. Never mind that the recruitment agency had been impressed with my typing speed and data-entry accuracy, I didn't even get a second interview.
So of course, last weekend was spent with a lot of crying and frustration, and my poor husband got the raw end of it when I raged at him for not going to work because he had a tummy bug (he was feeling miserable, and I was jealous that he had a job to go to while all I could do was sit at home and play Suzy-Homemaker. Seriously, job envy is the dumbest). I got angry with the world because it felt like all I had to offer to the world had no monetary value attached to it. And then I got angry with the Christian voices in my head that I could hear saying, "But think about the eternal value..." and wanted to rage at them and ask if that meant they were offering to pay our bills. And then I got angry with myself that all my training and work experience had been within Christian circles and blamed that for my lack of success in the secular world. And then I got angry with all the nay-sayers who tried to convince me to work in the secular world before going into ministry (believe me, I tried--it just didn't work out that way) and how it seemed they had just been proven right.
When all the raging subsided, I heard my friend Brett's words of wisdom in my head. Something along the lines of... "'Rejection letters' sound so harsh. Why don't you think of it more like, 'vocation discernment communications'?" And then I thought about all the job offers I had received before I got my work visa. It offered a bit of comfort to know that I wasn't being unrealistic with my job search--the jobs requiring my skill sets were out there; the timing just hadn't been right. And then I thought, "Ok God, you win this one. But then when is the timing ever going to be right, and how the hell are we supposed to pay our bills in the meantime?"
And then I thought about all the company we had over the weekend. And the anger and laughter and exhaustion and Truth-seeking and Life Together we had done. And suddenly I didn't feel like as much of a loser for only doing things that had eternal value even though we still have no idea how we are going to pay the rest of our bills.
Some concerned friends had asked a little while ago if I would still be willing to give as much to Church and ministry, and whether I would still want to be a pastor if we couldn't even financially support ourselves. I gave a half-hearted yes because I knew it didn't sound rational, and even though in my heart of hearts, I knew it was a resounding yes, I was fatigued. But having gone the round-about way and actually doing a bit of hard questioning, my answer is still yes. Because pastoring and ministering is more than what I do--it's who I am (Shut up about giving me crap about acknowledging I'm a minister.)
And now back to the drawing board with job applications all over again. Hopefully the timing will be right sooner rather than later, but until then, just keep swimming. Because... What Would Dory Do?
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