I recently went through a 3-month redundancy process, from mid-September to 30 November 2023. Out of those three months, I experienced multiple employee consultation meetings, out of which the first half was group consultation, and the last half was personal consultation. By the end of these meetings, I was confirmed to be made redundant. I never experienced a firm restructuring, so you can imagine the magnitude of overwhelm. My firm kept emphasising it was a business decision. However, it still inevitably affected hundreds of people’s career progression and livelihood. In my case, my legal right to live and work in this country was thrown into uncertainty as well. In addition to facing this at work every day, I had a mounting workload, I had to watch hundreds of my colleagues going through the redundancy process like I do, and I had lost a very dear friend, a brother in Christ, in a sudden death during this time. God was testing me on so many levels.
On 13th September, I remembered that was the date when the firm first delivered the news internally to us. After we were informed, my mind went blank, and my hands were shaking a bit. Then I quickly turned to a short prayer, though I didn’t know what exactly to pray for, as it happened unexpectedly. I then dialled Minh and told him about the situation, he kindly prayed for me on the phone. That same evening we happened to have an online bible study with the cell group, and I shared this news with them. They all prayed for me. In the days, weeks, and months that followed, prayers were said by many who remembered my work situation. Those prayers didn’t change my circumstance as it was still a brutal thing to go through. But those prayers changed me.
I’m thankful for the close friends I have at SC, who listened to me and understood me. I knew I could have the strength to wake up and have the courage to face work each day, because of the power of prayers. The prayers they shared with me and the prayers they said in private for me, all became and formed as a pair of invisible hands to hold me up, so I can continue to walk. I’m thankful for the Holy Spirit, who constantly whispers God’s word to me. He dropped particular verses in my mind and as I meditated on them, I finally have been able to find a breakthrough in my tangled thoughts: when I look back on this period months later, what would I do now that won’t make me regret? Then I had an answer, if there was only one thing I can do, and I can only do one thing well in this period, is to bring God glory. Whatever happened at the end of this redundancy process won’t matter much in the future, but how I respond to it now would matter to God.
So, what does it look like when I want to give God glory? It looked like I checked in on and prayed for my colleagues who were impacted by this decision. It looked like I treated my projects and clients as usual and did my best, not using what was going on behind the scenes as an excuse to drop my standards. It looked like when I had a bad day, I allowed myself to feel all I should feel and spoke to God honestly about it. It looked like I still paid attention to and enjoyed all the wonderful, joyful things in life. It looked like I was willing to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. It looked like when I prayed, I had so much fear inside but desired more to amplify my faith in God. It looked like I chose to have peace when I encountered the unexpected. It looked like I kept on serving others. It looked like I prayed the same prayer as Jesus did in the garden of Gethsemane, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”
Now that God has delivered me from a difficult situation when I look back, I’m thankful the Holy Spirit taught me to choose to glorify our God the Father whenever I can. I have learned that they can co-exist – my fear and my faith can co-exist, but only one can prevail in the end, which one would I choose is my choice and my call. When I asked God for His peace, very often I would experience things that disturbed my peace. However, I chose to close my eyes and let the tornado whirl around me, not because I was escaping reality. It was because when I closed my eyes, my mind could focus on God, and I had peace from the inside. The tornado outside and inner peace can co-exist. The absence of trouble doesn’t mean the presence of peace. Quite the contrary, they all co-exist. But only one shall remain.