Let's Talk Jobs...

Once upon a time, I graduated from college.  It was the fulfillment of 18.5 years of work.  I had been going to school since I was four and I was now almost 23.  Pretty much everyone I knew during that time said that college was the thing to do.  My own experience with various non-college type jobs seemed to back up that plan.  There were just two problems:
1. I had about the same idea of what I was really meant to do in life as I did in 8th grade; I still wanted to be MacGyver, but the Phoenix Foundation apparently wasn't taking applications.
2. Apparently a lot of more mundane and realistic companies weren't taking applications either.

So there I was, complete with a Bachelor of Science degree from Penn State, and absolutely no idea what to do with myself.  It's a rather common situation in the world today, but it's just plain depressing.  It's depressing, because it seems like everything your parents, teachers, guidance counselors, advisers and various other grown up type people have been telling you for 20 years was pretty much just a big lie.  Personally, I didn't think they were being malicious, they just didn't realize that the world had changed since they went through this nonsense.  Now, I'm not a big "look on the bright side" kind of person, I tend to see the world through gray colored glasses, so the fact that I spent almost a calendar year stocking shelves and selling office furniture at Staples, really came as no surprise to me.  It was just disappointing, and the whole time I felt like it was somehow beneath me, and I did my best "working for the man" routine: working enough so that the manager would leave me alone and trying to impress the girls with the fact that I could now lift a case of paper above my head with just the fingertips of one hand.
All the while, I was job searching, which is absolutely one of the least pleasant processes that has ever been invented by humankind.  You send out resume after resume, you look for openings, you grasp at straws and most of the time, nothing happens.  You just know that all these carefully crafted, nicely printed, lists of who you are and what you might be able to do are ending up in a file or a trash bin, and that is depressing.  It's depressing because you're not even worth a phone call or what my Dad calls a "we-hate-you, you-suck," letter.
Finally, I got a call from an environmental consulting company, I got a job "in my field," I was living the dream, I might actually avoid becoming the Gen-X stereotype of a college grad working in a convenience store and living in my parents basement.  It was then that I found out how observant Oscar Wilde was when he said, "the only thing worse than not getting what you want, is getting it."
As it turns out, the company that finally hired me was a poorly run, abysmally staffed, and borderline unethical company.  Staples, the object of my scorn, yet the source of my paychecks, was well run, invested in their employees and generally steered a good course.  After a year, I had been employee of the month several times, which actually felt kinda good, even if there was a tinge of irony to the whole thing, I had a 401K, been given several performance evaluations, training, raises and a promotion.  Then I left, and entered what can only be described as one of the circles of Hell, albeit probably one of the outer ones where people are kind of lost and wandering around in a daze.
I didn't make more money, I didn't like it better, in fact, it started to make me sick.  About a year and a half into it, I felt like I just needed to get out, so I made the only logical move, I took a promotion and moved down a couple of circles deeper into Hell.  It almost killed me, it almost destroyed my marriage before it ever got started and I will tell you with no exaggeration that if God hadn't grabbed me by my underwear and pulled me out of there with an atomic wedgie, I would probably have not lived to see 30.
But, thankfully, I got fired, or downsized, or whatever you want to call it, I was liberated.  I was set free in the nick of time to go to seminary and start reshaping the course of my life; I was 26 years old, but I felt a lot older than that.
I'm telling you all this, because I want to talk about jobs, I want you to know where I'm coming from, I want you to know that I didn't get here by my own wisdom.  I now have a Master's Degree, I am now the Pastor of a 200+ member church, I now feel that I am doing the work that God intended me to do.  I have a family, I can support that family, I am a homeowner and a taxpayer, at 39 I finally feel like a grown up.
But I know that the only reason I am where I am is because of the grace of God.  I know I am where I am, because, at a moment when all my plans had pretty much come to nothing and wrecked my life, my soul and my health, God gave me a vision of what I was actually supposed to do.  I followed that star and lo and behold: a vocation, a calling.
And I'm not special.  That's the thing, God has the same kind of plan for everyone (not necessarily to become Presbyterian Ministers, there are probably too many of us already).  Vocation is a real thing, but we treat it as if it's just a matter of "figuring out what you want to do," it's finding what you HAVE TO DO.  Sometimes you are going to stumble through a couple things, sometimes you're going to hate them, sometimes you might like them more than you thought.  The advice I have for young folks who are working through this process is to drop your assumptions and really pay attention to what every crappy job you work through has to teach you.
The work you do will ultimately mean more to you than it does to your manager, your boss or the CEO of the company you work for, the sooner you realize that the better you'll do.
The reason why monasteries are such spiritual places is because monks (or nuns) are trained and regularly practice the art of finding God in the most mundane tasks.  In their communities, someone has to peel the potatoes and clean the floors, but those are not impositions or distractions, they are, or rather they become, works of the spirit.
It's really hard to remember that when you're slinging fries or bagging groceries, but it's worth the work.  Good jobs and bad jobs alike, do a lot to shape who you are.  Don't let the good ones make you soft or complacent, don't let the bad ones make you jagged and hard.  Do what you do, whatever it is, to the glory of God, and you'll be surprised how good that is.