Ready to put in for a transfer?
Maybe you work for a company with no opportunities for advancement, or you’ve just had it with your present position and you’re desperate to relocate. Could be that your boss overlooks your contributions and fixates on your flaws instead.
When we moved to North Carolina a couple years ago, I left a job I’d held for nearly a dozen years where I was super fortunate to work for a terrific supervisor: one who gave me the freedom to do my best work without micro-managing my efforts and who consistently affirmed and encouraged me.
But after our relocation, I went to work for an employer who is a demanding perfectionist, one who never thinks my work is good enough. When my workday should be ending, she’s still hovering over my shoulder reminding me that I’ve left emails unanswered and writing projects unfinished. Honestly, she’s harder on me than she ever would be on anyone else.
In the name of all that’s good and holy, many times I’m ready to quit.
Where do you get a new boss, though, when you’re self-employed?
To my friend on the other side of this screen right now: Do you have a boss like that too? One who thinks that everyone else is more clever, capable, and confident than you are? One who tells you that you need to be smarter, more thoughtful, and better lookin’? One, in fact, who seems to be in command of a whole hive of be’s as far as you’re concerned?
Ever since I took piano lessons as a kid, I’ve known that composer Johann Sebastian Bach signed the bottom of his manuscripts not with his initials J.S.B. but rather S.D.G.: Soli Deo Gloria, Latin for “Glory to God alone.” It’s only recently I discovered that he wrote something else at the top of his manuscripts: Jesu Jevu, “Jesus, help!”
If your Self-Employer is coming down hard on you, too, try telling her this:
God is the Author of your story. This chapter might be painful to live, but he’s already written the ending (2 Tim. 4:5).
Human ambition is exactly that. Don’t mistake it for divine calling, which is not so much about what you do for a living but how you choose to live (Ephesians 4:1).
God doesn’t need your efforts, but he’s promised to grow your gifting. There’s no glass ceiling with God (2 Tim. 1:6).
As for putting in for a transfer? It’s already been done.
“For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins.” Colossians 1:13-14 NLT
Someday the earth will make dust of me. Let it. I have somewhere else to go.
And until then? I’m learning to give my employer a little grace. She means well, and she’s doing the best she can with the worker she’s got, bless her heart. When she gets on my case about all I’ve left undone or unsaid, or wrings her hands about situations I can do nothing about, I’ll borrow that notation from Bach and write “J.J.” above my day: “Jesus, help!”
Because I have it on good authority that Jesus loves me.
This I know.
Copyright 2021, Maggie Wallem Rowe. www.MaggieRowe.com