What next?

Yesterday I had my first job interview in almost 5 years. And this time, I thought I had a chance. The timing would have been perfect. I'll be graduating on 28 April and three days later, I would start my new job as a freshly graduated master in Theology. Today, I got the phone call: I was no longer being considered for the post. Words I've heard so many times in the past that I actually stopped caring. I didn't feel angry, sad or even disappointed. I didn't feel anything. When I was told that I had been unsuccessful, I just said 'OK'. After a rather awkard silence, she asked me if I wanted to know why. I had given up an asking for feedback a long time ago. The feedback was always the same: Someone else fitted the profile better. Anyways, now she offered to give me some feedback, I felt it would be rude to decline, so I accepted. She said that I met all the requirements for the job and that I was ideally located for the job, but others candidates were stronger in relating to groups of people at an informal level. People who know me know that I'm fine with one to one situations and speaking for large groups. Where I struggle with interaction with a group of people. It takes me so long to work out what I want to say in a group, that the discussion has moved on to the point where what I wanted to say doesn't add anything to the discussion anymore.

Many people have an irrational fear. Something they are so afraid of that it stops them from living their lives in a normal way. Many people are afraid of flying, even though they know it's by far the safest mode of transport. Others will start screaming when they see a spider or a mouse. I even know people who have a fear of buttons. I've always pride myself in having no irrational fears. Okay, I'm not keen on clowns, but they are just creepy. But now I begin to suspect that I might have an irrational fear. A fear that is affecting me so much that it stops me from reaching my potential. It's the fear of being wrong. Yes, I'm terrified of being wrong. That's why I'm not good in interacting in a group. I want to be absolutely, completely, 100%, beyond any doubt, sure that what I have to say is factually, morally, scientifically, etceterally, correct, before I say it. I find it very difficult when people say that I'm wrong. That's also why, and this is something that drives my colleagues at work crazy, I will rarely say something as a statement. When I have something to say, even if it's something I'm 99.9999999% sure about, I will almost always phrase it as a question. At least, when I'm wrong, I can at least hide behind the fact that I didn't make a fool of myself by confidently stating something that's blatantly wrong. But it also means that I can say things like 'so yesterday was Monday, so does that mean today is Tuesday?'. You know, just in case I slept for a very long time and missed a full day.

OK, I'm getting carried away now. Now another door has been closed, where do I go next? When I look around me, with people in my church, what often happens is that they try something, it doesn't work out and something else pops up and that does work out. God closes one door, and opens another door. My colleague was due to go to England for a year to do a course with 24-7 Prayer, when he was told the course had been cancelled. Shortly after that, I received a phone call, completely out of the blue, from a representative of the political party of which he is a member to ask him to stand for the city council elections of Eindhoven. Now he is a member of a key committee of the council and is having influence on what happens in the city. So here, God has clearly closed one door, and opened another one. With me, it feels more like God closes one door and closes the next, and the next. For the past three years, my ambition was to do a PhD and I was confident that it was going to happen. My current job, boring and frustating as it is most of time, did give me the financial means to finally study for an MA degree and meet the formal requirements to start a PhD. Little did I know that by now, universities have invented something called 'Research Masters'. These are usually two-year fulltime courses and it's there where universities usually look when recruiting people for funded PhD positions. I could still do a PhD with a regular MA degree, but it would most likely be as a self-funded external candidate. So, the door to staring my PhD straight after my MA was closed. Then I found a course in Leuven, called the Master of Advanced Studies. This was a post-master degree, especially for people who are aspiring to do academic research. So, I started to make some calculations. In Belgium the tuition fees are only about 600 euros a year, compared to about 1900 euros in The Netherlands. So if I could manage to choose my classes in a way that I can fit the whole programme in 2 days a week, and make sure I fill my car as much as possible in Belgium, I should be able to afford it. I applied and got an offer on the condition that I would pass my current MA degree. Unfortunately, for a number of reasons, the writing of my thesis dragged on and on. I missed the deadline for the September 2014 start and then for the February 2015 start. Now I'm finally due to graduate soon, I was looking to apply to start in September, only to find out that they are cancelling the course. Instead, they've introduced a two-year full-time research master. So that door, which was open for a long time, was closed again. Then I saw this vacancy for an IFES student worker, working with international students in Eindhoven. Already living in Eindhoven and part of an international church, I was ideally situated for this job. I had the right qualifications and experience, so I applied for the job, was interviewed and as you know, was unsuccessful. The question remains, what next? The idea of doing my current job for the rest of my life does not exactly fill me with joy. I'm still dreaming of working in a church setting, even becoming a vicar. The IFES job would have been a good way to try things out. I wouldn't be the first IFES worker who ended up church ministry. Now I've missed the mark to be an IFES worker, does that mean that I definitely don't have what it takes to be in church ministry? Or does it just mean that it's not the right route for me?

It's back to square 1 for me now. Next week, I have an informal chat with OM about the possibility of going on a mission with them. Now, I'm not a missionary. The idea of going overseas to tell people about Jesus absolutely terrifies me. But still, because of things happening to me recently, I've started to think that maybe God's plan for me is not to be relying on my self to get what I need, but rather to trust on Him to provide me with what I need. So, that's why I started looking into the possibility of going on mission, even though the prospect of it terrifies me. It's going to be a big step of faith for me, in every aspect. I think I'll just be honest. I'm no good at missionary work, but I might be able to do something to support mission. Perhaps teaching their children, or something like that. Who knows? So far, God's plans for my life have been a complete and utter mystery to me. Maybe I've always been looking in the wrong direction. So, maybe I'll end up somewhere I never thought I would.

To be continued.... at some point.....