Editing

When I was in high school, my job was operating the shot clock at school basketball games. It was a pretty sweet gig and higher paying per hour than most high school jobs were. And it was a lot of fun.

But I noticed that when I would watch college basketball games on TV during high school and into my freshman year of college, my finger would twitch when the shot clock needed to be reset. My brain was so programed to hit that reset button that I did it without thinking—even when there was no button to press.

Fast forward to after college, when I worked for a church in the children's ministry. One part of my job was making the kids' bulletin, and that interfaced with my life, too. I'd look for new kinds of puzzles I could use when I was doing puzzles in my free time, and I couldn't get through a sermon without playing the bingo I'd created...and looking around to see how many kids were using the bulletin.

So it wasn't surprising to me that when I became an editor, it impacted the way I read. To clear up a common point of confusion, I'm a content editor. Although I do fix grammatical mistakes when I see them, my job is making sure content makes sense, fits our filters, and is the best it can be. I do a lot of critiquing, rearranging, and evaluating. Then we have an awesome team of assistant editors who polish it up and make it all consistent and grammatically accurate.

And I noticed almost immediately after starting my job that the speed at which I read books in my free time slowed waaaay down. Because I was constantly critiquing the order of things, and wondering whether the editor made the writer include that sentence...stuff like that.

But recently I realized that editing impacts my life in a far greater way than just the way I read books. And it's not good. I realized that I edit people. When I see someone I haven't met, when I hear someone talk, when I interact with someone...I realized that my brain is editing even then. I'm critiquing. I'm evaluating. I'm thinking of how to make what they do, say, or look like better for the setting.

It's really pretty terrible. It's presumptuous at best. But really...it's just plain sinful. Why am I editing something God made? I think he might know a little better than me. Maybe it's time to edit inward and learn to stop editing people.

In the Midst

Yesterday I had lunch with someone who wanted to know my story of how I got to my current place of employment. I'm sure I've blogged about this before, but if so, it's been a while. And rehashing the story just reminded me how God is so present even when he doesn't seem to be.

I was at my previous employer for a little over three years. My role was primarily curriculum development, and I also led the teen helper ministry, which was a huge passion of mine. I also was in charge of conferences—not something I enjoyed.

So in March of 2008 when I learned that I would be in charge of the nursery (I can't stand babies) and losing the teen helper ministry, as well as reducing the amount of time I had to spend on curriculum development...I was crushed. Even though I also lost the conferences, which was a bright spot of the change, I was devastated to lose the teen helpers and gain a bunch of babies.

This began a very dark time in my life. I started my new position that May, and I was miserable. I quickly began to feel depressed. I couldn't sleep at night. I would regularly have to leave my desk, go to my secret hideaway at work, and curl up in a ball to cry. And I was very, very angry at God for doing this to me.

But here's the thing. I'd applied for other jobs, including one where I currently work, during my time at my old job. And while I hadn't even gotten as far as an interview in any of them, applying at those jobs made me think, "Could I really do that? Could I really leave the teen helper ministry?" I loved those teens, and letting go of that would've been really hard to justify.

So God just took it away from me. I didn't have to decide to let go, it was gone. Although that made me really angry, I can see now that he was loosening me up to prepare me for the next stage of my life. And because I had months to transition the ministry to new leadership, rather than a couple weeks, I was able to do so much more thoroughly.

As for the nursery? I'm so glad I didn't have to be there any longer than a couple months. (I put in my notice to go part time and only do curriculum about a month and a half into the nursery job.) But I did learn some things in my short time there that have applied to my current role. Even in a job that was a total square-peg-in-round-hole fit for me, God was teaching me, shaping me.

I said to my lunch buddy yesterday, "It was one of those things where I couldn't see God in the midst of it, but looking back he had such a great plan." And it's true. Everything that happened in 2008 was necessary for me to transition well to a new place in life.

When life seems dark and we don't know what on earth God is up to, he's still in the midst of it. He's probably doing something absolutely amazing, if you can just hold on.