Coming out of Berry College in May of 1999, I thought, “Man I’ve got life together.” I spent two years with the Navigators at Clemson University living among and serving students.
From there I felt God leading me out on an adventure to San Diego. The world tells us that we will find happiness and fullness of life with the perfect job and like-minded relationships. (TV’s “Friends” is just one influence giving us these delusions of grandeur.) Surely within a year I’d have my dream job and all the friendships I could handle. But instead God had a ton to teach me.
Jobs
God does give “dream” jobs, but none of them are perfect, as my friends and I have all come to understand. When I moved to San Diego I was convinced that a “career” job would be easy to find. Man, was I way off. After 4 months of looking, I went to work with a retail outlet for nine months, then as a data processing temp for two weeks. Since then I’ve been unemployed for nearly eight months. God has faithfully taught me so much about looking for a job and working.
I’ve learned there are at least two types of jobs 1) those that enable you to develop your skills and interests, and 2) those that let you develop your relationships. I did not enjoy the work with the retail outlet, but it allowed me to develop relationships with my co-workers. On the other hand my data processing job focused on sports, which I love, but didn’t allow me to develop relationships with co-workers.
But God showed me that neither job could fulfill the longings and desires of my heart; that only He could do this. A job only serves to provide me with a means to love people. I began to realize that for me, my job would be a springboard to loving others, and not completely fulfilling as an end to itself. This has been a very hard lesson for me to grasp.
Friendships after College
Lessons on friendship have come slowly as well and honestly I am just beginning to learn what friendship is by God’s measurements. I know one thing; making friends now is different than it was in college.
College provides a lot of built-in commonalities, starting with all of us being students. From there, common majors, common classes, clubs and campus groups, shared living and eating environments, all lend themselves to getting to know people who share similar interests. This all changes abruptly upon graduation.
I was used to quickly developing deep friendships in college and was surprised that it didn’t happen so easily in the work world. The commonalities are few and most likely center around where you live and work, not values, interests, etc. On top of this, there is significantly less free time during a given day than in college, and everyone is “distracted” by their own interests. Invading someone’s life takes time, effort, and relentless prayer. Knowing Christ gives me something in common with His followers, but I’m learning that finding common ground with those who don’t yet know Him takes deliberate and concerted attention.
by Brian Terry
