Being Prepared

I know that this sounds just like a motto for....oh...a scout group or something, and while that is a great motto I have a slightly different meaning for it here. It is not a noun, but an adjective..or at least as much as I can remember my English class.

Being prepared is a process. For instance I took typing in high school. I really only took it becuase there mostly girls in that class, and I figured that was a good thing. But I was really being prepared for the computer age. Typing is actually the class I took in high school that has served me the best overall. I don't have to hunt and peck, I can move pretty rapidly in doing something and with spell check I only have to review for the dumb grammatical mistakes I make.

Being prepared for things in life is a process that is always happening. God has many ways to prepare us for things He has in store for us, many that may not be all that pleasant but that will come in very handy when opportunity arises to use our knowledge, provided we learn things along the way. If I hadn't actually learned how to type in the class it would have been just a passage of time...except for being able to be around more girls of course! I have had a lot of instances of preparation in my life it seems.

The most recent experience of this happened last year. I am in the mortgage business and have been basically my whole career. The past two plus years have been a very difficult time. Financially it has been extremely hard. Very hard. Early last year things were going very poorly and we were struggling greatly. I really wondered what He had in mind for me learn and what I was learning it for. What ever it was it wasn't fun.

About ten years ago I worked in the non-profit housing area setting up a lending department for a non-profit housing group and was involved on a national basis with homebuyer education and lending. Since foreclosures were a huge part of the problems we were going through my wife, Joy (there is always Joy in my life!), suggested I might contact them to see if they needed any help with counseling in this area.

They did. They were swamped. They are a HUD approved counseling agency and had gotten grants to do this counseling so I was able to work out a contract agreement with them. I am also a Stephen Ministry Leader, which is a national caring ministry that does one on one caring with people in need. So I had my "preparation" of being very near where many of these people were at, but also that ministry background and training to draw on. It worked out that being able to do that helped us survive, at least until the funding ran out after a year of putting in 20-25 hours a week doing that as well as doing everything I could to survive in the mortgage business.

My employer was well aware of what I was doing and was fine with it, knowing that we all had to try to do what we could to get through these difficult times. I knew when I started doing it that God had given me the preparation I needed. Not only that but when it ended was the right time as well. I was becoming very exhausted and worn dealing with the issues of people in dire straights.

Things have improved somewhat in my mortgage business, but are still very difficult. I know that He provides and trust in Him completely. He is preparing me for something else, I know not what, but know that I will be ready when He is if I just pay attention and learn!