Wait

I've been in a funk, my friends. I've been trying to find a part-time academic job for next year with no success and it's been weighing on me. I've been thinking, "Maybe it wasn't a calling to go get a PhD. Maybe it was a hallucination. Maybe I should have kept right on homeschooling but instead I've subjected my children to five years of public school and intermittently distracted mothering and whatever is wrong with them in the future will be all my fault."

I kept going into the Adoration chapel on Thursday mornings and saying, "I need a job for next year." And I kept hearing the same thing: "Wait."

"Wait" is not my favorite thing to hear. I am bad at waiting. I like strategies, and Plans A/B/C. Ask me to choose between action and waiting and I'll pick action, hands down.

"Wait" leaves you vulnerable. Noah built an ark on dry land and waited for the rain -- can you imagine what his neighbors said? Jesus left the planet and kept the apostles waiting for ten days before the mysterious Comforter put in an appearance -- did they have moments of wondering what he could have been talking about?

Last night my phone rang in the middle of the kids' section at Barnes & Noble, a number I didn't recognize. The caller identified herself over the background of my noisy daughter: the chair of the department here in town. She asked if it would be better to talk the next day. Mercifully, providentially, I didn't try to have a conversation then, because Stella lost her mind, wailing and shrieking in the floor, about two minutes later. (She likes to rearrange the merchandise. She wanted to take some children's books over to the fitness section, and a children's backpack to the rack of adult bags. I said no because she hates it when I return things to the kids' section and I'm not going to leave stuff in random places for employees to deal with later; drama ensued.)

This Thursday my Adoration hour fell right before our schedule phone call. This Thursday I knelt down to pray and I heard something different: "It's for you." I hesitate even to tell you that, because people do ALL KINDS of wacky things based on what they think the Lord told them. But listen to what happened next--

You might remember that I knew one of the faculty here in town had applied for an administrative job, and that if she got it there would be some gaps in the teaching lineup for fall. I had begun to assume this hadn't happened, though, since it's getting pretty late in the summer. That's what I was expecting to hear about when I talked to the chair this morning, but it turns out a completely different faculty member is making a surprise move and giving her just a few week's notice to get things sorted out.

She asked if I could teach a class outside my area of expertise and I assured her I could. She asked if the scheduled time could work for me and I assured her it could.

She offered me the position over the phone: one class in the fall and one in the spring.

A part-time academic position, that elusive beast, in the department that's less than a ten-minute walk from my house.

It's exactly the thing I've spent five years hoping for, dropped into my lap just as I was beginning to think gloomily that I'd need to find a part-time clinical job.

I am so overwhelmingly grateful it brings tears to my eyes.