the holiday is over

It is with mixed feelings that we must announce that Caspian has found a job. First of all, we need to give all praise and thanks to God, because this is clearly a blessing from Him! In this environment, with so many redundancies (translation: layoffs), and with no previous UK experience, the chances seemed bleak. But God has shown us again and again on this adventure that what is impossible with man is possible with Him. He truly has taken care of us every step of the way and this is a great encouragement that our decision to put our trust in Him was a good one; it seems that God will allow us to stay here for a little while longer.

The job is a contract position with American Express and the initial term is for three months, with the possibility of an extension. Caspian is working in the Victoria area, which is in the southwest part of central London. It’s quite close to Westminster and all its iconic landmarks (Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, British Parliament, No. 10 Downing). It’s quite surreal, actually. He has been cycling to work (more on that later) and his commute takes him right by Buckingham Palace! In theory (and this is a big stretch), if the Queen should so deign, she could see him ride by every morning and then again in the afternoon after work! The work has been good so far and Caspian is enjoying the opportunity to learn new things and meet new people. (On top of that, his new boss has been on holiday for two and a half weeks) We’d be lying if we said we weren’t even a bit relieved at having found full-time work, notwithstanding our previous posts about working hard not to lose sight of why we’re here and trusting in God instead of jobs and money.

That’s where the mixed feelings come in. Firstly, there will be a lot less 'free' time, as work will now take over a good 8 hours of the day. Even though he had put a lot of his time towards the job search (looking through postings, writing and rewriting his CV and cover letters, and then rewriting them again, applying), it was nice to be able to control the pace and have time to read, write and enjoy the day. Secondly, travel will become a little more difficult. People had told (or warned?) us to travel as much as possible before we went back to work, as the opportunities to take time off would be few and far between.

And lastly, with the return to full-time work, it will be very easy to get back in the 9-5 groove, and let our focus on God slip to the side. To start taking things for granted again. A timely object lesson for Caspian occurred last week while he was cycling to work. He managed to get himself in a little accident, crashing his bike and taking a little spill. Very luckily, there were no cars around and he managed to escape with no more than a few scrapes and a bruised ego although he did hurt his wrist too, allowing him to test out the NHS – national health service – by getting an x-ray at a local hospital. A cool thing about the system here is that they have a ‘minor injuries unit’ which is basically a non-critical ER (called A&E here). This allows the A&E to focus on severe cases that are of a life-or-death nature and not get bogged down with minor injuries. It’s a pretty good system, but we digress.

The accident happened because he was trying to adjust his bag while still riding, as it had swung over to the wrong side. He took his eye off the road and didn’t notice a pothole in the road. The lesson was that it’s really important to stay focused on what you’re supposed to be doing. As much as we tend to get sidetracked with less important things and even try to do a few things at the same time, we have to stay focused on the most important things. In Caspian’s case, it was simply riding the bike. And it’s not like Caspian’s an inexperienced rider, either. Riding a bike is something that he’s quite comfortable at doing. But it goes to show that if you’re not careful or focused, even the things that come easily to you can go wrong.

We’ve grown a lot these past few months and have definitely gotten better at putting God’s perspective at the centre of everything we do. But, as comfortable as we’re getting with this, we can still fall if we don’t stay focused. And we mustn’t forget the lessons we’ve learned along this journey, of faith and contentment, nor the things we’ve felt God leading us to do, such as spend more time with the Bible and writing down/sharing the thoughts He reveals to us.

We hope and pray that we’ll stay focused. And we’ll start by again giving praise and thanks to God. As one of our previous posts was titled, there’s much to celebrate!

(The images above are of a pen that Caspian found at his new desk. Quite fittingly, on one side is the HSBC logo and on the other is the American Express logo.)