The life of a Jonahite: When our journeys fail to meet our expectations

Last Sunday during church the speaker was talking about obedience when a thought came to mind about Jonah in the Old Testament. It gave me pause as I wondered about how well I follow the commandments. I don't have a problem with killing people or worshiping idols, not many people of faith do, but the commandments I am speaking of are the unmentioned sort. The ones we know deep within that we need to be following. The words the Lord writes upon our hearts and whispers to our souls. These are not stone inscribed tablets containing one line numbered sermons that descend down from a mount in the arms of a mighty prophet.

These are gentle impressions that float by. So softly, like the cotton drifting along in early summer as the towering trees shed their spring coats. The thoughts that are so easy to miss because we often stare at the engraved stone tablets like a checklist and assume we are doing well enough. 

All of us, at times, are not true to who we know we are and must become. In that sense, we are not following the “commandments.” These are the boundaries we each feel we should stay within or the peaks we feel we should climb. Achieving new heights that help us reach beyond our current station in mortality.

The Voice

Everyone is different and thus everyone hears a different voice coming from the same source. We each are taught in a language we each are able to hear. This is not a “tongue” but an understanding of ideas that we are ready to accept. A successful marriage seems to be one where a husband and wife are hearing the same voice and working towards the same goals at the same pace. Even more successful is the marriage where one hears the voice first and compels the other to listen and to rise to the same level or ideally beyond. Thus, in turn, encouraging each other into a leap frog effect that ends in an eternal embrace with our Father in Heaven.

Hopefully each of us recognizes our own abilities and eventually comes to terms with where we fall short. Like Jonah we sometimes decide to go our own route for a while. We run from Nineveh and where we feel we need to go. If we do not go and do what we feel we are commanded to do we will eventually find ourselves sitting alone, in a filthy darkness, floating in the sea of this bleak world. Having come to terms with our loss of light, our inability to control our course and overall helplessness, we turn to the One that is our source of light. Our source of direction and the source of all life.

Finding ourselves spit out on the beach of a new beginning we drag ourselves onto the winding path towards the goal we are now much further away from. So we listen to the voice and do what has been asked of us. A burden and responsibility only we can achieve. Then, having achieved this task, it is almost as if we are waiting for heavenly trumpets or a chorus of a thousand angels to triumphantly announce our success. It does not come and the end result is often different then what we expect.

A “Jonahite” attitude may exist as we sit under our gourd, having accomplished what was asked of us, and demand our own ending. The ending we feel is just or the stamp of justification for doing what we did. It does not come and we wither away, sliding back into the belly of the whale of our own ignorance.

The Path

Reflecting on all of this I can’t help but think about what has happened in my life over the past six months.

At the first of this year I returned to a path I left shortly after college, that of teaching high school students religion (Seminary) for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I did not fully complete the hiring process in 2005 and instead went into real estate related careers. Finding myself unemployed last summer I returned to student teaching this winter and everything aligned into perfect order so it became possible for me to provide for my family while teaching only one class.

Miracle after miracle occurred due to family and friends and it all led back into the classroom. On my way home from my first day teaching anxiety bled out of my heart and flooded my body with cold sweats that eventually went away but even with medication the “bleeding heart” effect was always in the background. Describing clinical anxiety to someone that has not felt it is difficult. It is not only an emotional reaction but a physical one that often one does not realize they are experiencing until the bed sheets are soaked through and the dreaded hopelessness sets in. You quickly become a shell of who you were and face your feeble mortality, one racing heart beat after another. Weight loss comes with the lack of appetite, as does the desire to hide from anything approaching the anxiety producing cause. 

It was rough taking over another class for someone else in the middle of a trimester and almost impossible with anxiety. Student teaching is like having a job interview, every day for several months. It is not easy. Especially when in the Seminary program you usually only get one shot in the hiring process.

On the drive home from teaching that first day this winter I realized why I left the student teaching program in 2005. I ran away from that monster many call anxiety. Freed from its claws for so long and not recognizing what it was in 2005 I fully saw it for what it was this time around and was determined to not run from it again. I committed to teach for two months until the trimester was over and I was not backing out again. I pushed through with the support of my loving wife and completed the semester on a high note. I loved teaching that class and learned so much. I learned to love the students and to love the profession of teaching religion. I opened up my heart to it and embraced it fully. I left myself wide open to whatever was to come, fully believing it would be an offer of employment to be a Seminary Teacher.

The Wrong Path?

I was not hired to teach, like a mountain of stone the news rolled on top of me. It hurt with a pain that after three months I am still feeling. I broke my wrist in 8^th grade and it required surgery. Sometimes at the computer I still feel slight pangs from that injury 20 years ago. Will this rejection be the same?

I knew, beyond all doubt, that I was to teach those two months. That much I was sure of. The challenge (one of many) that I have discovered in my short 34 years is that when we start a journey we think we know the destination or the experiences we will have. We expect certain results and anticipate the ups and downs on the way. The challenge is that most of our expectations are unmet and what we thought was the end goal is usually the start onto another journey. So it was with teaching. I expected to have a few challenges but to be successful and in the end receive an offer of employment. Those few challenges turned into some of the most painful of my life. The ending led to rejection.

So am I a Jonahite?

Did I follow a path I tried to run from, finally returning and expecting a different result then what the Lord had in mind? How often do I do this? Maybe I am the only one that feels this way but very frequently I have unmet expectations. Especially if it is something I have planned out with an anticipated result.

After being turned down from teaching, I must admit that I sat under my gourd for a few days. The most difficult part of the experience was that there were so many unbelievably amazing people that were praying for us and offering support. Telling them it was a no when they were so confident and hopeful broke my heart on many occasions. It was painful on many levels and like facing the rejection all over again with every person I told.

Most did not know this at the time but the Monday before I received the bad news, my wife and I found out we were pregnant. Our youngest is 6 and we just assumed we could no longer get pregnant. The fact that we found out the week of when the news about teaching was to arrive seemed to be yet another miracle and another sign pointing in the affirmative direction that I would get hired to teach. So when the bad news came the gourd and I became fast friends.

Moving on

My wife and I picked ourselves up and moved on. I painted for about a month and then went back to working commercial construction doing laborer work. Two weeks ago we decided to look into MBA programs in accounting, due to the suggestion of a friend and previous Bishop. We thought it would be perfect if we could find a job, even part time, where I could work in an accounting related position while going to school. The next morning, a Friday, another good friend and neighbor called saying his company was interviewing for an accounting position that day and wondered if I could break away to come up and interview. I was offered the job as I was heading home from the interview. I started work the following Monday.

This life is strange. We follow the path’s we are given or the ones we choose and rarely see expected results. The most challenging paths are the ones we feel we are directed to travel and then come to a dead end. The most soul retching is when we expect to find an oasis as our end goal and in fact the expected oasis is yet another stone mountain to climb. Stepping out of the brush of our travels we clear the final canopy and look outward expecting relief when all we can do is look up and see the journey continue.

So we climb and we listen to the voice within, trying to follow and to be led. Trying to keep moving on, even when the gourds of this life call for us to sit in our dejection and wither away. It is our choice, to continue forward or to sit and waste away. To do what we feel is right, or to sit in the stench filled darkness of our failures. Our task is that we simply go, to go and do.

 -The Feeble Soul

© 2014