Check Number 3

I recently posted about how I have put my complete faith in God to provide for a move back to St. Louis and a return to school. I wrote about how he provided me with a place to live and eat. Now I was waiting for the third check... a job. Well, I have accepted a job as an Individual Care Aid. I will be working with an Autistic 4th grader. The job not only will help me make contacts for when I finish my Counselor Degree, but it will also make accomplishing several of my class assignments easier. The most important thing is that this job offers FREE health insurance.

I was EXTREMELY nervous about working one on one helping to educate this very intelligent child. However, I started thinking about it and this had to have been God's plan all along. He gave me everything I needed in a job, housing, etc, but if he had made it all easy, I would have quickly forgotten his provisions. He gave me a job that will force me to enter into my fears and to trust him and to seek his counsel. I am grateful because too often I forget.

There is one aspect of all of this that hurts a bit. It is sad, believe it or not, to leave my job at Blue Cross Blue Shield. God challenged me there as well with a boring job, but he opened my eyes to the needs of the people around us. He also put me in a place with a lot of need to highlight my God-given gifts. He placed people around me who were non-believers and believers alike. People that had strange personality quirks, marriage problems, sick children, abusive spouses, homelessness and so much more. I was humbled that I grew up 20 minutes from all of this and I never really experienced the poverty and the pain around me. He forced me to share my testimony with people experiencing similar situations and guided me to share my faith. I had never ever done this. One coworker made a decision for Christ during all of this. Through all of this God showed me that I am accepting, patient, encouraging, caring, willing to help, willing to lead, willing to listen, and willing to love. I am not sure I would have recognized my gifts without this experience and i am not sure that I would have followed his gifts to pursue a career in counseling. I am extremely excited about my counseling classes. For once, I feel like I am heading in the right direction. While the job at BCBS was sometimes painfully boring it was necessary for me to experience that. Thank you God. I can't wait for what you have next.