Undeserving

I thought it might be good to give an update here on my job search so far. It's not appropriate to go into details about where I've applied and who has told me to get lost so far, but here is an overview . . .

• I've applied or submitted resumes to 26 different places.
• I've been fortunate to get some sort of follow-up--a phone interview or at least something more than a form letter acknowledgment--from a dozen places.
• While we still would love to be able to stay in Fort Wayne, I've spread my applications far and wide, literally from New England to South Carolina, San Diego to Seattle.
• I have one campus interview scheduled for next month but right now don't feel like I have a line on any sort of likely job . . . I'd be glad to be wrong but I think we're a couple of months away from a resolution, at best.

Turning to the title of this post, on my Facebook status a few days ago, I wrote "Palmer is very undeserving." What I meant is that I feel very blessed by the attention and support I've received from friends and colleagues. Let me give you a couple of examples . . .

About a week ago, my cell phone rang one evening. A friend from a college in Oregon was calling out of the blue. She had heard the day before that Taylor University was closing and had spent all day trying to figure out why Taylor was familiar to her. Finally, she called a mutual friend and asked if I was at Taylor and got my number from him to call me. The next day, she also e-mailed me a job possibility and the names of some people who I should connect with. That's kind of above-and-beyond the call.

Last Friday night I went to a funeral--they called it a celebration service--for the mother of one of my friends here. I'd never met her but I knew she was an icon in the community so her service would probably be special, and I thought it was a good gesture for me to attend. The church was huge so it's hard to estimate attendance but there were quite a few people there . 800? I probably knew only a few dozen of the entire crowd.

Midway through the two-and-a-half hour (!) service, my friend asked for prayer for one of his mother's friends who has cancer, as well as for anyone else having physical difficulties. Then, again out of the blue, he asks people to pray for Palmer! Huh? Why would this man, at his own mother's funeral, think to ask people to pray for me by name in my job search? He called a pastor out of the crowd who prayed for each of those requests. Ironically, it was a man whose wife used to work for me but who ended up leaving Taylor because of the office reorganization I implemented last year.

What no one would have known is that earlier in the afternoon on Friday, while waiting for a phone interview to start, I was questioning, "If you're God, how could you have let us come to Fort Wayne and then allow everything to fall apart?" The prayer at the funeral didn't answer the "why" of my question, but it did reassure me that God does care and is aware of our concerns.

So, yes, I feel undeserving.