Too Much Time, Not Enough Trust

By Jenna Martin (one of our "Epic regulars")
It only took a 10-hour workweek for my trust in God to waver. That’s it. As I look at that sentence, it’s easy for me to consider deleting it because it is so sad to me. It’s so sad to me because thousands of people have lost everything they own or love in Haiti, and it only takes a cut in work hours for me to question God.

During the other 20 hours that I could have been working that week, I do nothing. And it’s not like I do nothing because it’s relaxing either. I do nothing because I’m frustrated. I’m so angered by my lack of work that it drives me to hours of feeling sorry for myself and thinking, “This is not fair.” I imagine God watching me, shaking His head and hoping I’d look up and see Him and seek His wisdom on the matter. But I don’t look up, and I don’t spend any of those 20 extra hours seeking anything to do with Him.

During the 10 hours that I actually spend working, I am unhappy. I go to work after thinking a lot and have created what I think is the real reason behind my cut in hours. It suddenly seems so obvious to me: my manager, who everyone has had recurrent issues with and who has never had a really nice thing to say to me, must have a problem with me. I spend my time at work unusually unfocused on my job at hand, and waste time complaining to the other two assistant managers. For all of this frustration and resentment I’ve now worked up, however, I don’t think to actually discuss it with the manager I’m accusing. I point the huge l finger at her but prefer not to actually say anything. It’s a difficult scenario to look at now because I so thought that I was the good guy and she was the bad one!

So, I let myself feed into my own pride. I was right in my thinking; I was the victim. She should just know that I’m unhappy with her, I must’ve been thinking. How ridiculous. I was letting these thoughts about how she’s wronged me get so far beneath my skin that it was becoming a distraction to my everyday life. It was a distraction to a healthy life. When I started to recognize this, I fed into Satan’s reasoning that I just didn’t know how to fill so much free time. Too much time off was zapping my energy, making me lazy. (I was active in the “poor-me” thought department, but I was lazy in the “Hey God” department.) Meanwhile, I was taking this superfluous frustration out on my meaningful relationships like with my mom. The relationships I was taking it out on were those that probably did try to get me to see my wrong thinking.

Then one day my little sister said something that slapped me to the very core. “You don’t like me anyway,” she mumbled to something insincere I’d probably just said. I didn’t even know what to say to her. I couldn’t believe that I’d been so negative the past few days that she could infer such things as I didn’t care about her. What a poor example I was!

After that, I was snapped out of that gross place I’d been. I returned to the Bible and had a long get-together with God. I asked Him to forgive my lack of trust in Him and for putting it in places it didn’t belong—like my own mind. I was reminded of how much Satan relies on our minds as a breeding ground for sin. Unfortunately, I had been letting my toes dance around on that soil for a few days.

The next week’s work schedule came out the next day, complete with the absence of an additional hour. A 9-hour workweek. I looked up to God, “Well, I can use these extra hours more beneficially now!” I turned to trusting Him that these hours were just what He’d intended for me. Maybe I’d need to extra time for something else. It was amazing how much my mindset had changed once I’d let God be back in charge! Then, He told me to call my district manager and ask him about my hours. I was nervous, but I called him. He didn’t answer, so I left a voicemail stating my wonder about the lack of work I was getting. He never called back. “Oh well, another vacation week,” I thought.

On the next day I went into work, I had been given another 11 hours. What had been a 9-hour week was now 20. My district manager might not of called me back, but he listened to the message God urged me to send. I was thankful for the hours, but I still needed one more thing to totally make the whole situation better. An apology.

God put it on my heart to pull my manager aside at work, so I did. I told her I was sorry for any of my ill behavior. I apologized for my pettiness and for my exhibition of immaturity. I told her about my frustrations I might’ve had (or thought I’d had) in the past with her, but promised to talk about them with her professionally. We talked for a good half hour, and at the end I could tell that we were both relieved. She claimed to have not noticed a whole lot of the behavior I was talking about, but I apologized nonetheless. I respect her, and nobody deserves the words or thoughts I might have said about her. Never did I have the right to judge her. God righted not only the situation but also my relationship with my manager also.

I don’t want that person knee-deep in uncalculated frustration to come back again.

The road is so much smoother when I retain my trust in God. Whether it was 9 hours or 20, the fact is that He’s given me plenty. I’m so thankful. And He’s given me more than enough reasons to trust.