Lessons I'm Still Learning

When all of this is done, when I'm in the new job that God is preparing for me and when I have discerned where I am to serve him in my music ministry, I need to sit down and think of all the lessons I have learned.

At ProMatch, they say that interviews are to determine three things: if you can do the job, if you will do the job, and if they can stand you while you do the job. What you know seems to be less of a determining factor than attitude. More important is who you know and how you know them. Ultimately, our connections to other people are what is of most value.

Famous lines come to mind. Blanche Dubois, in A Streetcar Named Desire, declared "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." John Lennon sang that he could "get by with a little help from my friends." And the Tin Man of Oz learned that the measure of a heart is not how much we love, but how much we are loved by others.

I have never been any good at staying in touch with people after our lives no longer intersect, but I'm willing to learn how. Through Facebook, I've connected with cousins I haven't seen in decades. Through LinkedIn, I've found old co-workers. I'm going to do a by-gone real networking thing-a-ma-bob and meet someone for lunch on Friday.

M is someone I was acquainted with at AMD. She was laid off years ago. I found her on LinkedIn and thought it might be nice to reconnect. When I last spoke with her on the phone, I got a rather negative vibe off of her. This concerns me a little bit because I feel that to move on with my life, I need to put aside negative feelings. When I see some of my former co-workers, all of us unceremoniously dumped by Spansion, some of them are still in a very unpositive state. Yes, a bad thing happened to us, but we need to move on. I don't want to be around that, the endless moaning and groaning. I don't want to be like that.

However, I feel led to reconnect with this woman. Maybe that was a little arbitrary bit of negativity and it's not how she is all the time. Or maybe she is sunk into a spiritual hole and needs contact with someone who has clawed her way out of the hole. God calls His people to be the light of the world, and we're not to keep our light under a bushel. That profits no one. And some of us (like me) have to realize that a light kept isolated from the rest is also of little use.