I had a whole post planned about something else for today, and I ended up putting it aside for another day because yesterday, life went topsy-turvy.
Usually, I do not check Slack or email before 11 am. My company works primarily on West Coast time, so the earlier morning hours are blissfully free of meetings. I got to the gym a bit late, so on a whim, I opened Slack while I was mid-stretch (in child’s pose, to be exact). I saw many DMs (abnormal), including one from a C-Suite exec who doesn’t usually send me messages. I skimmed the paragraph, but my heart froze when I saw the words, “you probably read our CEO’s email about layoffs…”
At that exact moment, I was not afraid. I knew severance would be generous if I were on the chopping block. “Oh, well,” I thought, “it was fun while it lasted.”
But then I kept reading and saw the phrase, “we value you and want you to remain on this team.” I let out the breath I had been holding, checked my other DM’s from my manager and colleagues, and read the CEO's email to find that 40% of the company had been laid off.
That’s 300 people.
I processed this while still in child’s pose. I’m lucky I was in child’s pose because I was already on my knees, which is where I would have been regardless. I felt so fortunate. I felt like I had survived something catastrophic. I felt dizzy with relief, even though I claimed I wasn’t scared.
Later, my wider team met to go over the new organizational chart. The meeting was half the size as it would have been just 24 hours earlier. I scanned faces to see who was there and who was missing. On the new org chart, I had to look more than once to ensure I saw what I thought I was seeing. My specific team was reduced…to just me. My team now consisted of myself and my manager. The chart looked naked and sad.
I went through the rest of my day in a daze. I cooked dinner. I walked the dog. I chatted with my kids. But, I felt unable to process what had happened. In my 15 years of working in multiple sectors, this was the first time I had experienced a severe cutback. My heart hurt thinking of all the people going to bed worried about providing for their families. I felt all the emotions — gratitude, grief, anger, resentment. You name it, I felt it.
Now, I messed up thinking that my husband could read my mind and know that when I said, “I’d love to have some wine and talk about my day,” it meant that I needed to vent and process. I was not looking for solutions or a life roadmap. I was looking for gentle sympathy. I needed hugs, not fixes. So my irritation simmered, bringing to my mouth all the other things I wasn’t adequately processing. Soon, a light-hearted debate about whether Sublime or 311 was the worse band became a tense argument about bigger things. The night ended with me going to bed angry, not even saying goodnight… tears on the pillowcase.
No human, earthly person can know what you need unless you tell them.
Every day we put God-sized burdens on flawed, imperfect people. We expect people who get—if they’re lucky—85 years on earth to replicate God's all-knowing, perfect love. Then we get mad at them when they fail to meet these impossible standards.
Luckily, this morning was our weekly 6 am prayer meeting. As I prayed in that room full of amazing souls, I could not stop tears from streaming down my face. I was sad for my husband and sad for myself too. We didn’t have any familial role models for lovingly communicating our needs. We came from generations of poor communicators and then expected that, magically, we would reverse the patterns without having to work for it. I realized that both of us spend hours of time per week learning things—how to change a tire (him), apply eyeliner (me), or train your dog not to bark at the Amazon delivery truck. But how much time did we devote to learning how to be married? How to anticipate your partner’s needs? How to grow in spiritual intimacy and stop expecting telepathy? Safe answer: not enough time. Not by a long shot.
I told a dear friend at post-prayer breakfast that today would be the anniversary of the moment I said, “enough.” The thing is, even if we lack worldly models of how to love well, we have a God blueprint to follow. Every step we need to take to communicate with truth, compassion, and grace is laid out for us pretty clearly. All we need to do is read it and do it. It’s that simple.