Happy Monday everyone! This week, we’re continuing with our series of Table Talk conversation cards. If you missed the previous cards and want to go back and print them out so you can use them at your family table, or with your book club, or at your next meeting or holiday party, you can get them here:
— Conversation Card 1 click here
— Conversation Card 2 click here
— Conversation Card 3 click here
— Conversation Card 4 click here
— Conversation Card 5 click here
— Conversation Card 6 click here
On the porch today, we’re moving on the Card # 7, which comes from Rachel Hauck’s book, The Wedding Dress:
Sometimes a question hits you where you live, and this topic was that way for me. As I was pondering, I realized that I’ve had my dream job, and right now I am being systematically, unequivocally, and through no fault of my own, fired from it. The injustice is monumental. I’ve done nothing to deserve it. I’ve been good at my job for over twenty years now. I’ve put my heart, my soul, my body, and my mind into my work, not to mention my time. Hours and hours and hours of time.
Anyone who knows me knows that I’ve given it everything I had. Yet now I find myself feeling a little like the old man in the dark suit in the the corner office. The guy who used to be the corporate star. Once upon a time, the company couldn’t survive without him, but now the world seems to have passed him by. He’s finding out that, while his back was turned, the board members have held a secret meeting and his services are no longer needed. Oh, they’ll keep him on as a figurehead, as a reminder of the good ol’ days. They’ll pay homage to him at Christmas parties, and thank him from time to time in speeches, bring him little gifts now and then, maybe take him out to lunch. But it’ll never be like it was. The reality is unavoidable.
Time marches on. Old guys in dark suits lose their positions as company frontrunners, and so, unfortunately, the do the CEOs who really run the world. The moms.
It sneaks up on you little by little. Your job description changes. Your duties are whittled away. No more need to change diapers. No more helping to wash little hands. Then your shoe tying assistance isn’t needed anymore. Pretty soon your book-reading skills aren’t in demand either. After that, it happens in a rush. Less helping with homework. No more fashion consultations on the first day of school. No lunches to pack. No one to drive to school or herd off the bus.
They’ll get there on their own.
Then one day you get to the point where I am now–when you look around and you realize that your job, that dream job you once loved, has been phased out one duty at a time. Oh, you still have the title of CEO but it doesn’t mean what it used to mean. The world has a new gravitational pull, and you’re not the center of it. It doesn’t matter that you attended every field trip, that you baked for every school party, that you woke for every nightmare, that you sat up through every night of coughing, and sneezing, and teething. That you comforted countless teenage heartbreaks. That you took a hit now and then and didn’t fire back.
The time is still upon you. It doesn’t matter how good a job you did…
Or maybe it does, after all.
The end result of a job well done is a product well made. A product that’s ready to travel to its next destination, to assume its intended purpose. And even though the strangers who come in casual contact with the product may never know it, somewhere deep down, in some hidden place, there is a label.
It says, Fashioned with the love by Mom.
New On Shelves — The Latest Moses Lake Book
Click here to read the first Chapter!
