the 25 year paragraph

I thought maybe I would make it this time. But I usually think that until something happens that I either caused through my decisions or just decided to cause.
I mowed lawns for my dad’s church as a teenager. After that my first real job with real hours and a boss and a paycheck and all that was cleaning hotel windows for a janitorial company. That was 1985. I lasted two or three months there before being terminated. I wasn’t cleaning windows fast enough.
Over the next 25 years I’ve had about a dozen jobs. The longest I held one was almost four years. The shortest was one night. This may not seem like a good thing to post in cyberspace for everyone to see. When I came out and posted my conservative Christian points of view a few months ago I considered it risky but really just saying what I believe and braving the wrath of more liberal friends is nothing. Now I’ve just posted that I may not be the most employable person around. Truth or not, maybe I should keep this vilifying information to myself.
After Pacific Window Cleaning I worked at Pizza Hut Lahaina for nine months before quitting to go to college. In college I worked a switchboard and mailroom job. I worked at Jack-In-The-Box for two summers, a boy scout camp one summer and a different Pizza Hut my last summer of college. Then I went back to the Wahiawa Pizza Hut and drove after college until I left to live on Maui again. On Maui I was a telemarketer for a day and an Ihop cook for a night. And from 1991 to 1994 I worked at KNUI radio. I left that job when the graveyard shift became too difficult with a family. I drove airport shuttle vans for two years. Then I went to Budapest Hungary and taught English for two years. Coming back I worked a few day labor jobs until landing a bob as a substitute teacher. I drove the same airport vans over the summer but by the fall of 1999 my daughter Naomi was in and out of the hospital on Oahu. Our family left Maui for good and moved in with my parents in Yucaipa. From November of ’99 to May of 2000 I didn’t hold a job while Naomi had several hospitalizations, a bone marrow transplant and radiation. I got a job working at a placement facility for juvenile offenders and kept that until February of ’01. Then I transferred to the school onsite and taught special education. Naomi passed away in ’02. In April of ’03 I lost my teaching job because I had not done work enough to get my teaching credential. In July of ’03 I went to work for a Land surveying firm. I worked there until the economy and the housing market began to show serious signs of recession. I was let go in March of ’07. Six months later I went to work doing church facilities.
I’ve been there three years and have a week and three days left before starting my new job as a church custodian. My prayer is that I hold this job forever, but that was my prayer before too. So I will try to pray more that I stay obedient to God and do well where I am and follow his will. I have not always done that and have let lots of people down. In the last 25 years I hope I have at least learned how to humbly follow God.