The Journey and the Journal

NOVEMBER 14

HE KNOWS WHO I AM!

Terrible bosses. Most of us have probably had one or two of those! I can pinpoint my favorite boss...and I can pinpoint the horrid one! The job was awesome! When I left my previous job and started at this new place, my salary almost doubled! In order to protect the guilty, I will say nothing more that might divulge the name of the company.

So, here I was making lots of money, (which was only right seeing I was the executive assistant to the CEO, CFO and COO!), and everything was going just fine. They liked me; I could work for them. A couple of them had pretty deplorable lifestyles and were quite short in integrity. For instance, one day when I was in one of their offices, that boss got a phone call. He told me to pick it up, but first he said, "If it's that person again, tell them that I'm not here." I told him I would not lie and that he should be glad because that made the chances pretty high that I would not ever lie to him. I answered the phone. It was the dreaded lady. "I'm sorry. He is not able to take a call right now. Let me get your name and number and have him call you later.." This same boss doctored the financial report when it came time to sell the company!

That's the way it was. When one of the three bosses came near my desk I had to cover up what I was doing for another of the three! They always wanted to see what the other ones had me working on!

Slowly, things got worse. One day, this terrible boss screamed at me over the phone because I had not reserved a car for him at the airport. Etc. I cried after I hung up the phone. He was a powerful man! After doing some checking (for I was sure that I had reserved a car for him), I discovered that the rental company had made the error! That day, I vowed: That's the last time I will allow a boss to speak to me that way again! I stuck to it!

Strangely, he liked me. They all three did. I could handle a lot, jobwise. However, I could not handle the dishonesty  I was made privy to in the financials; nor taking calls from the president's wife knowing that he was with one of our employees; nor the gossip from the lips of the three about the other two! Every day, fear gripped me as I walked through the door.

My stomach began to do strange things. Every 15 seconds without fail, my stomach would quiver for maybe five seconds.. I began to hate to go to work. Day in and day out, my stomach troubled me. I liked the pay; we needed the money since two or three of our kids were in college at that time. I was miserable.

One morning I woke up to the chorus, "Behold, God is my salvation, I will trust and not be afraid...." It was SO cool! It came out of nowhere! I hadn't thought of that song for a long time. Then a half hour later when I got in the shower, the song came to me again! The conclusion was that God was encouraging me for the day!

I got to work early that day. My "year" Bible was sitting on the passenger seat. I was a week behind. I wondered if I should try to catch up or read the passages for that day. I decided to read the pages for that day. Guess what the very
first verse was!

 "Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid!" Isaiah 12:2!

Now...that's no coincidence! It's funny what seeing that verse on the page before me did for me! Three times in one morning, God had clearly spoken to me, each time from His Word! I was SO thankful to Him...and that...was the end of my twitching stomach! I was not afraid to go in and face the day and to see my disagreeable, conniving, arrogant, dishonest boss!

I can't underestimate what God did for me that day, even beyond calming me emotionally and physically. He made Himself known to me once again. He told me that He knows Sharon Heldman by name.