This is the beginning of the story that is published in the Guide posts book Divine Interventions. To read the rest of it see the side bar for details.
The phone call left me confused.
“I’m sorry, but we cannot offer you the position you interviewed for. We decided
to hire someone else. Thank you for your interest.” Click. Stunned, the phone
remained in my hand. I didn’t understand. They told me I had the job, and I
already came in and met some of the students and the teachers. Dear God, why
did this happen? What am I supposed to do now? It’s late September and I’ll
never find another teaching job. I felt like such a failure after seeking
employment in several other schools after I had left a tumultuous district. Later,
I discovered the problem was due to legal matters. They had to hire back the
person they fired, but that didn’t help matters when it was December, and I
still wasn’t working. I filled out a few applications and prayed. “Dear God, Your word tells me to ‘Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you’ (Matthew 7:7). I’ve been asking,
seeking and knocking for almost two years. Don’t you have anything for me, or
do I need to forget about ever teaching again?” Unsure if I should still
pursue this career, I turned to taking care of my family of three children, two
cats and a husband, and I continued to fill out applications and pray. “Lord,
lead me where you want me.”
January rolled around,
bleak and dismal. I’d been out grocery shopping, when I walked into the house,
shaking off the cold. My daughter, Mara, excitedly explained an enigmatic phone
message. As I listened to it on the answering machine, I wondered who the
person was that had called. I couldn’t place the rich, deep voice of the man or
his name, Theodore, nor the school he referred to, The Circle of Courage. What
kind of school was it and where was it located? I had never applied there,
so I was perplexed. I listened to it over again and discovered that it was in a
nearby city, Poughkeepsie, where I had no connections.
But maybe God was at
work, so I decided to follow up. Once I was connected, Theodore explained. “We
found your application on line with the BOCES system.”
I had forgotten I submitted
that as computers and on-line applications were just beginning to be utilized.
“I didn’t know you could access that. What kind of school are you?”
“We’re a public, special
education school.” His voice reminded me of the actor, James Earl Jones.
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