In Tough Times, Remember to Look Beyond Yourself

Every day the business news brings fresh anxieties. Bankruptcies, foreclosures, layoffs. It's only natural to ask "Is my company OK?" "Am I OK?" "Is my job secure?"

For some, the answer has already come, and the answer was "No." Your job was not secure. Forces came into play that made mincemeat of sales projections and staffing needs. Very senior executives are wondering if they're next. If you are still working, maybe you are wondering that, too.

Before I went into the ministry, I was in sales, with Xerox and with New England Life. I've seen some of the ups and downs in business that come with the territory. But I've never seen conditions like this.

In the heart-to-heart conversations I've had with business people from all sorts of industries and at all levels, I've heard an unprecedented level of fear about finding jobs, keeping jobs, and just making ends meet.

When I talk with someone who has lost his or her job or is deathly afraid of that happening, I try to keep three things in mind. Perhaps these points will be helpful to you or to someone else who is important to you.

First, this is not a time to be alone. Isolation is a Petri dish for growing more fear and more insecurity. You need a community to help pull you out of yourself because you are vulnerable to a lot of negative thinking. Some of that negativity will be generated in your own head, and some will come from some other poor soul, even from within your family, who may only be able to offer criticism and discouragement.

I've seen firsthand, from our small-group ministry, how five or six folks can provide incredible support, encouragement, and positive reinforcement for an individual.

Second, you need to help someone else. This is particularly important if you are still working because it can keep you from over-imagining dark scenarios and, even worse, from becoming hardened to the pain that others "out there" are feeling. There are a lot of opportunities for you to tune up the capacity to be "other-oriented." The person who needs encouragement may come across your path today. If you help, you'll be amazed at the peace it can bring you.

You may be a CEO or top executive who is required to cut positions. Ask first: "Have I exhausted every possible alternative to reducing staff? Can we trim expenses from another area or institute salary reductions and temporary furloughs? Are we sharing the pain?" It's a question that's more than 2,000 years old: "Am I trying to love my neighbor as myself?"

Third, be open to something that you can't imagine. If you are torn from a job you love and from income you need, it may be that God is trying to get your attention. He may have something better in mind for you. That is a very difficult idea to absorb. It is, honestly, a challenging one.

You've taken a bad hit, and circumstances are undeniably tough. You are bumping up against your own limits. You need people around you who are not drawing on insights and strength that are merely human. You need people of faith and the refreshing, restoring, reordering possibility of the divine. That is something that may come only when your own human resources are played out, when you've hit the wall.

C.S. Lewis, the best-selling author of the Narnia books and a lay theologian, captures this reality well: "The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men."

That is a difficult word, and you may be in a difficult place. But you could also be at the beginning of a journey that will bring you to a better place, and to riches that are unexpected, unimaginable, and immeasurable.
Buddy Childress is the executive director of Needle's Eye (http://www.needleseye.org ), a Christian ministry to the Richmond-area business community.