So everyone has heard a million times how we are in a recession and there are bail-outs all over the place...its true. Now we hear how the market is supposedly leveling out and that unemployment is not really getting any higher. WrOnG! Ever since they have mentioned how it is leveling out and the unemployment rate is decreasing, I start to hear about how people I know are losing there jobs. There has to be something wrong with this picture.
Omar's job appears to be pretty secure, thank goodness even though people at the headquarters in Atlanta have been laid off recently. Really for Omar to lose his job, the whole company would have to close in Jacksonville. Let's pray that doesn't happen.
There have been some cuts at my own company, a non-profit, due to loss of funding. So far I don't appear to be on the chopping block. I guess you never really know though. There have been cuts to each area in different ways. I am not exactly sure all the cuts that will be coming my way, but it will end up costing me more out of pocket to work than before, beginning soon probably.
Here we are buying a house and all these unknowns. Sometimes I think, "do we continue?" Yes, is the answer. We both feel good about it and if something happens before we close that causes us to lose the house, that is fine, we will survive. No big deal. But we can't live in fear forever. I think that is what everything with this crazy economy is about - fear. So you lose your job, not ideal, not easy, but life will go on. I am not asking for a reason to have it happen to me or anyone else I know, but somehow life goes on.
This past week, you may or may not have heard about Taylor Bean & Whitaker the mortgage brokerage. They were one of the few that actually survived everything that has happened and they were just seized by the FBI on Wednesday do to their top executives committing fraud. Over a 1,000 employees lost their jobs and livelihoods in a matter of minutes. Our close married couple that Omar and I are friends with both worked there and so both our out of a job with their first baby on the way. They are good troopers. There are a lot of unknowns right now, but life goes on.
Today at church really the message was about adversity. I would not say that I always deal the best with adversity. As much as I hate to admit, I have asked God "Why?" before. I just know that the more adversity I have had, no matter what form it comes in, I always grow - or at least I have the choice to grow or to let it effect me adversely. Life is all about choices. I hope that I don't allow fear to be the deciding factor in my life and that I really can believe that things will work out for the best. Somehow they always do.
