Trials

What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise - Oscar Wilde

We are impatient people. We want what we want when we want it and we don't want to wait. And we have actually gotten worse as a society in the last 10 years since the dot com bubble burst and Americans found themselves with less money. We have started to get a sense of entitlement, like we deserve everything we want in life, and not that we have to earn it.

I have been in the staffing and recruiting industry since 1998. I have watched how the job market has changed, salaries have gone up and down, entire industries have almost disappeared. I have gone through a period of unemployment and know the terrors associated with it. I also have known the blessings that come after the trial.

There are many different trials that we can go through in life. Loss of a loved one, loss of employment, divorce, and illness are the big four that I can think of off the top of my head. All of these are difficult and can be life-changing. In my life I have experienced all of them. I lost my cousin in a car accident when I was 18 and all of my beloved grandparents are gone. I lost my job in 2001 and started a new one the day before 9/11 (blessing, indeed). My parents divorced when I was two, and I spent my life living in a different state from my dad. Both of my dad's parents died of cancer - a brutal and painful way to die.

And yet, with all four of those trials, there have been amazing blessings. I am very close to my cousins as a result of losing the oldest of us. The job that I started on 9/10/01 ended up being an ideal training ground for what I am able to do now working from home as a recruiter. I got to spend my summers out of the heat of Phoenix, with my dad, and have wonderful summer memories. I married a man who still had 3/4 of his grandparents living and have been able to get to know them, and my kids have been able to know their great-grandparents.

In the movie First Knight Sean Connery says the line, "There is a peace that only can be found on the other side of war." Whenever I am going through a trial, I think of that line. My trials are not meant as punishment from God for something I have done wrong. In fact, my trials often come when I am strongest, because He is still molding and shaping me into what He needs me to be. It's how I approach the trials and work through them that I learn and grow.