FEELING SORRY FOR MY SELF

Earlier this year, my wife, Suzanne, informed me that the Census Bureau, which had employed both of us briefly for the 2000 Census, was again accepting applications for census workers. Since that time, I have contacted the necessary people, scheduled an application appointment (“app app”), and taken a placement test. If my background check works out okay, I’ll be called for an interview sometime in the next four months.

Today is Sunday. This Friday, a month will have passed since the app app. I’ve spent the interim taking care of my dad, visiting my mom in the hospital, going to church, writing the occasional article, looking for work, getting sick, getting over being sick, and agonizing over the prospect of once again facing that tribunal that is the Job Interview. One more clue that my Self is alive and well is the pain I experience when anticipating applying for employment.

Someone recently told me that I should not be so hard on myself. “You’ve just been unlucky,” he said. “Look: You’re part of the Baby-Boomer Generation—the biggest bolus of humanity to pass through the American economy since...well, ever. You’re not the only one who has had a rough time staying employed! Just keep trying. You’ll get something.” Well-intentioned words, no doubt, but are they true?

Using the figures provided by that very Census Bureau that I want to employ me, I can sketch out a rough version of my circumstances: The highest unemployment rate at any time during my life—from 1953 onwards—was 11.4%. That was between 1990 and 1992, admittedly a rough patch for many...including me. Even when troops were returning from Vietnam in 1975, the unemployment rate rarely topped 10%. That means that, most of my life, 90% of my peers had jobs when I did not. Okay, so a few other guys didn’t have jobs either. Did they even want them? Were they always the same people?

I know that much of the time I spent without work it was by design. I would get a job just to earn enough money to go back to school and finish my degree. When I could afford to attend for a term or two, I’d quit my job and attend college full-time for a year or so. When I ran out of funds, I’d drop out of school and look for another job. I never looked upon any of those jobs as anything more than temporary employment: a sort of stepping stone to something better down the road.

Only that something better, once I got “down the road”, was never there. “‘Last hired; first fired’ is the story of my life,” I once said. Well, it may not be the whole story but it’s a big part of it. Every time I would finish a course of study and then go out into the wide world in search of an application for my newfound skills, I would find one of two things: either the demand for those skills had dried up while I was acquiring them or they nearly had. It never occurred to me to settle for less and just get a job. I wanted a career. So, undaunted, I’d go back to college to pursue yet another certificate—only to discover, when I’d gotten it, that there was no market for that skill either. There’s a lesson here somewhere, if I could just figure out what it is!

There were jobs along the way that paid fairly well, and that would have lasted a while if I’d have let them. Only I wasn’t at all sure that I wanted them to last. After all, I told myself, I wasn’t really cut out for them. I was just faking out myself and everyone else into believing that I could do them—just long enough to get to the next rung of my competency ladder. Except I never got to the next rung. I’m frozen on the First Rung—probably for life.

So it is that, every time I go out to look for a job, filling out an application feels like regurgitating a decades-long litany of failures and excuses for marginal living. It is the sharp pangs of chagrin that I feel at such times that demonstrates to me—in no uncertain terms—that my Self is alive and well. After all, if I weren’t Self-ish, why would I care? Why would I feel any shame or chagrin when looking for work is the right thing for me to do in God’s sight? Why would I feel guilty for having coasted as a fake, a flake and a failure when He has already forgiven me for all I’ve ever done?

But I am Self-ish. I must be.

Only a Self feels shame or chagrin when in Truth there is only Victory; only a Self feels guilt when in Truth there is only Justification. In Christ, my past has been amputated and is no longer a part of me—all that remains is the lingering pain of a phantom limb. I need to keep telling my self that, if I’m ever going to truly divorce him.

Just the same, I feel sorry for my Self. I see him writhing in agony as he anticipates feeling the lash once again for his past sins. My soul cries out for mercy: “Can’t you see he’s in pain? Is this really necessary? Whatever happened to ‘do unto others...’?” Even now, I wonder: does he really need to be crucified? Wouldn’t a euthanizing shot of morphine accomplish the same end?

Honestly, God: I’m waiting for an answer. It must have torn You to see Your Son treated like a shish kebab. Was it really necessary for Jesus to die like that? Couldn’t a whack up beside his head with a sledge hammer have done the trick? Hemlock was good enough for Socrates; why not for Christ? To tell You the truth, I want more than anything to rise with Christ—I just don’t want to die with Him: not if it means enduring such gut-wrenching torment.

Only now am I beginning to appreciate just what my Love must have been feeling as He plead with You that the Cup of Suffering might pass from Him. Only now do I begin to see what it means to be a partaker with Him in that Passion. Please forgive me for wanting to escape my own. I will yield to You, with Your help. May Your perfect will be done!

UPDATE: Today is Monday. The Census Bureau called today and hired me to be an Enumerator once again. I will have a job for anywhere from two to eight weeks. Thanks, Dad.