Becoming like a little child

This past summer I served as the Pastoral Intern at Trinity Covenant Church in Livingston, New Jersey, about an hour north (sans traffic) of our apartment in Princeton. As I was driving to church early one Sunday morning, I began to pray for the service at which I was to preach. Preaching is one of those bizarre creative activities that kind of takes on a life of its own. A preacher goes through several phrases of preparation– reading the Scripture passage, thinking about the Scripture passage, playing with the Scripture passage, ignoring the Scripture passage, resenting the Scripture passage, returning to the Scripture passage, making amends with the Scripture passage, falling in love with the Scripture passage, becoming obsessed with the Scripture passage, seeing applications of the Scripture passage everywhere, etc. Then she writes the sermon. And then the sermon writes her. (There’s Preaching 101 for you).

So I’m driving, right? And I’m praying. And it’s not exactly the holy kind of prayer where every word sounds like a choral anthem, but it’s a prayer, my prayer. You see, I’m concerned because my preaching preparation has led me into dangerous territory. I’m worried that the words that I’m going to say will sound like a child trying to soothe a parent over something that the child is too young or too protected to understand. So I say things like “Lord, make these words your words” and “Don’t let anyone look down on me because I’m young (or female).”

You see, I was preaching about trusting God through financial hardship, through markets collapsing and jobs being lost and bills needing payment and 401Ks going kaput. And since I am just a wee lass and I live a life of student-simplicity and I don’t have money in the market or a retirement plan or a house to lose or bills I can’t pay…

The service went well. The sermon went well. When it was over, I got back in my car and headed back to Princeton. I thanked God for the help.

The next day, Peter and I got up early, walked Bono, and made breakfast together– coffee, eggs, bagels and cream cheese, fruit. We set up my laptop, logged into our Netflix account, and settled in to eat breakfast and to watch a movie. About halfway through the show, my phone rang. It was my dad. He asked if I was home, in his stern, concerned voice, which is never a good sign. I said I was.

Then he told me.

He told me that he had been laid off. He told me that the fifteen-year-old company that had employed him for the last eleven years unceremoniously gathered together a hodge-podge group of its employees for a meeting. My dad told me that he walked into the meeting and knew something bad was about to happen when he surveyed the room and knew that there was no reason why he would be meeting with this group of people. He told me that a newly-hired “consultant” stood in front of the group of people, and, declining to show any graciousness, said, “You have worked your last day for ——-.”

People cried, people raged, people sat, shell-shocked. My dad didn’t tell me what he did. But when I visited a few weeks ago, I saw the two boxes of belongings that he packed, still in the trunk of his car, unmoved. One is filled with pictures- pictures of his beloved deceased beagle, pictures of my sister, of my mother, of me. The other is filled with mementos and copies of his professional life at the company- the magazines he wrote all the copy for, the interviews he conducted, the awards he received. He didn’t tell me what he did when he heard the news, but I know that part of what he did was pack those two boxes and place them in his car, like a man who has just been thrown out of the house he helped build by the partner who chose him. Heartbroken.

He has been driving around with the weight of those two boxes in his car for over two months now. He drove with them back and forth, to his neighborhood public library and home again, using the library’s computer and Internet to apply for jobs. Over 120 of them.

He drove with the boxes to the DFW airport, to pick me up when I visited and drive me back when I left. He drove with the boxes back and forth to Best Buy to endure the worst customer service experience either of us has ever dealt with in order to purchase a desktop computer and get set up with high-speed Internet access at home. He drove with those boxes in the trunk and his youngest daughter in the passenger seat. I joked that I had to bring my parents at last into the 21st century. I set up the computer. I showed him how to work it. And now his car, with the boxes, sits in the driveway at the house while he answers ads, surfs Craigslist, and composes cover letter after cover letter. Over 140 of them, now.

My dad is 61 years old. He’s a writer. He is near retirement age, but he is not near retirement. He is not anywhere near it. Because the way it works, friends, is that when a person retires, (s)he retires from the work (s)he was doing, and lives (mainly) off the money that was saved during the time (s)he was working. And so, my dad is 61 years old. And unemployed.

And I am sad. I am sad because I know that part of the weight contained in those boxes is a burden that I can’t comprehend, like a child trying to soothe a parent over something that the child is too young or too protected to understand.