I don't want to admit this, but I feel I must. There are times when a man must own up to certain things. My admission is this: I never really liked the song "Save The Day".
There. Now that it's out, I feel like I can move on.
The really interesting thing is the story behind the song. The album cover to Beyond makes mention that I needed a particular type of song, one geared towards the audience, and when I sat down to write it, the song literally fell into place. What I neglected to say was that it always seemed, well, sort of - trite, to me. Because of what I needed from the song, it lacked a sense of . . uniqueness that I wanted from the album. It always felt thrown together (because it was) and almost as if it was an afterthought (which, again, it was). Perhaps if I had taken a little bit more time to develop it, it might have come out better -- or I might have simply chucked it.
That last option is probably what would have happened, and if it had, I don't know where I would be right now.
You see,
I didn't write that song,
God did, and He wrote it for
me.
I wrote Save The Day just before I lost my job in 2009. I went on to record the song for the album Beyond, never knowing that the one song I didn't particularly care for would be the one song that God kept bringing to the forefront of my mind when facing some of the most difficult decisions of my life.
It's hard to understand what goes through a man's mind when he loses his job. I went through the usual feelings of fear, but they were always tempered by the saying "I was looking for a job when I got the last one". Even though I dreaded wading out into the job market, I never thought that I would have a difficult time landing a new job.
Then Christmas came. I didn't think I would be looking for more than a month or two, and in fact, I had said that I would be guaranteed to have a job by April 2010 because that was when I projected our savings would have run so low that we would be barely surviving.
Then Summer 2010 came. I thought that I would land a job somewhere. There had been plenty of jobs opening up in areas that I had plenty of experience, and I would be perfect for the job. The interviews never came. But Christmas 2010 sure did.
I had a huge expense hanging over my head, just waiting to come crashing down: the final mastering and duplication of Beyond; and the money was quickly running out. My projection was that we would be in serious trouble by April 2010, and by Christmas 2010, things were looking very dire. I managed to get seasonal work, but that wasn't enough to do anything but stave off the inevitable.
New Years 2011 came in with me being laid off from the seasonal position and no help in sight. We finally decided to bite the bullet and finish Beyond regardless of what it did to us financially. Several thousand dollars later, our bank account looks like we had just opened it and our monthly outgo was several hundred dollars more than out monthly income.
All the while, every time I got scared, the chorus of Save The Day would play in my mind. Needless to say, I've had that song on my mind a lot these past two years. Every time I looked at the storm clouds hanging precariously over our future, God would press play on the mp3 in my head. What would go dancing through my thoughts?
Our God will make a way
The One who is the Truth
He will come and save the day
he will fight for you
When you're feeling tired
When you can't go on
He will be your rescue
He will carry you home
When the fight is hopeless and the battle is almost done
When your strength has failed and you are over-run
Remember He is with you, He's faithful to the end
He'll fight the battle for you, He is your defense.
In February of 2011, I heard about a place in Reno (60+ miles away) that was hiring temporary employees for warehouse positions. I have plenty of experience in warehouses, so I applied. I was hired on by them, but it took another two to three weeks for them to find a suitable place for me. As it turns out, this place was about 75 miles away from my home -- one way. I started working for a company that was paying me $8 an hour, and less than 30 hours a week, I was barely making enough money to pay for the gas to get to work.
But I was working.
God provided.
I applied myself as much as I could, and I worked my way from being a back-up to a regular temp employee putting in 40 hours a week. The only down side was that because I was working and I was away from the house for well over 12 hours a day, I wasn't able to make it to our church's food bank on Thursdays. That food bank was what was keeping us off of the streets.
Despite having a job, our savings continued to be depleted, but at a much slower rate. Our mortgage payments (which are about quadruple most people's car payments) were still coming out, and we were emotionally preparing ourselves to have to send a hardship letter to our lender and possibly have to give our home back. It got to the point that we decided to wait until a specific date. If things didn't change by that date, we would begin the proceedings.
And the song played on . . .
God has moved again. He has provided me with an opportunity to work at a company that is less than half the distance (29 miles one way) at several dollars more an hour, along with the ability to have overtime and actual career advancement opportunities. This will allow us to reverse the backward slide that our bank account has been doing, and we can actually climb out of the hole that we have been in for a year and a half. Just when we thought that all hope was lost, God stepped in and saved the day for us.
The song continues . . .
It is only God that can take a song that I didn't really care for in the beginning and turn it around and use that very song to encourage and minister to me in my darkest times. There is no way that I can plan that. I'm not that smart.
It is proof, yet again, that God can (and does) take that which is meant for bad and turn it around for His glory. I could go into the details of how I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was God that secured this job for me, how it could only have been He that moved on the hearts and minds of people to allow a position for me, but that might distract form the point. The point is: God is faithful when we can't see the outcome. God is faithful when the only thing we can see is pain and detriment. God is Faithful.
Our God will make a way; He will come and Save The Day!!
