Please Fasten Your Seatbelts. Life Turbulence Ahead.

Wow...this is the longest yet that I've not written. I re-read my last post and than reflected to this point that I'm writing, things have yet again taken a surprising turn. I sure don't know where I'm going but boy...I'm glad, excited, scared and puzzled all at the same time. I'll explain myself soon enough *grin*.

My last post was on a lunch that would determine whether or not the project that I currently manage is to go bust or to carry on. It carried on all right. The next month or so had me sleeping in fits, working round the clock, alternating between verbally flogging (if anyone has seen Band of Brothers, remember to when Easy Company cowered in ditches at both sides of the road to Carentan under heavy machine gun fire and their CO kicked and pulled at them to get their a**es moving) and motivating my team members, negotiating hard with the clients and managing my bosses all at one go.

It seemed to me, three sets of eyes were on me, my bosses, the clients and my staff. I joked with a colleague of mine that I have to manage too many people's expectations. My boss, my clients, my staff and my wife. All four points of the compass! Ha!

Those were long hard weeks and God carried me through them. I don't know how I would have survived without His wisdom, strength and peace. Some may scoff at this but I too many things have happened in my life that cannot be attributed to sheer chance or talent. Heck, till today I don't think I'm talented at all and what little talent I have is laughable. *grin*.

All throughout those weeks, I had to be conscious how I was to lead my team and how to be Christlike at the same time. It's a hit and miss affair I tell you. That is my constant struggle, to integrate my faith into my work. As Pastor Thomas would say, to live an authentic spiritual life is to recognize that we don't separate our personalities into work and church. Otherwise we'll need to reach for that bottle of Valium to stave off impending schizophrenia.

But I'll leave that discussion to another day. Suffice to say that I was sometimes successful and sometimes I crashed and burned. It was a surprise to me then, to see how well the team started to gel. I didn't believe in myself enough to pull it through but someone does. Personal conflicts and differing opinions will remain, but the crucial thing is that they work together. Plus the client got what they wanted and are pretty pleased and no longer cursing me in my face in Thai and smiling while they do that. The one disadvantage of working in Thailand is that you go into a meeting and if they are not happy with you, they'll pretty much curse and swear at you in Thai, giving you sinister furtive smiles and side long glances and then sweeten up as they switch back to English.

And then a funny thing happened. I received a call requesting me to attend an interview and after 3 rounds, I nailed the job without really wanting to or needing to but knowing that I just wanted to cut down on my traveling. I kinda prayed for God to deliver me out of this hell-hole project and and He did plus 1.

Ahhh….this funny thing doesn’t end here though. Now my immediate boss is negotiating to keep me (please forgive me if I sound like I’m bragging….I’m not ok!) and I’m having all sorts of guilt bouncing inside of me now. Sigh….I can’t seem to leave and I can’t seem to say no. I’ll need to think it over this weekend but I’ve pretty much made up my mind to leave. Just need the space from this veteran’s argument to form another argument. The crappy side of it is that I like working with this guy. It’s just that this new job is a good opportunity.

And funny thing number 2 happened. Wifey decided to go and get all pregnant like (she's gonna kill me when she reads this). So, yeah...I'm gonna be a daddy. I'm happy, scared sh**less and at loss for words. So a new job, a kid on the way...."The only thing constant in life is change itself" may as well be in the bible as God not so much mentions it but hints at it throughout the testaments.

So wifey and me are looking at a whole new ball game here and our knees are knocking, excited and worried about that little bump in her womb (it was a shaped like a round nut on the ultrascan) that's gonna be a boy or girl, will come to term safely. I can’t wait until the next scan!

Basically, the future is looming upon us and a long dark road stretches ahead that we can't quite see far enough in front. If you ask me, I need to let go and leave it in God's hands cos I'm having a mild heart attack just thinking about the impending logistics to come and the costs associated with it (shoot me. I'm a project manager and that's what we do. We're compulsive hypochondriacs).

I guess this scene plays itself out millions of time that to a lot of other people, it doesn’t look like a big deal. It’s just gonna be another suburban family in the making whose kids will be the apple of mum and dad, but the devil incarnate to everyone else at McDs. So what? I feel like we’re going in for the ride of our lives, with nothing but the love of God, family and friends to hold onto. That’s pretty big a deal to us…

Lunch at the Top of the World

This week has turned into a pressure cooker and yet it's only mid-week. But I don't think I'll talk about work this time around but here's something for those of you who have been in similar situations. Two days ago, the big guns of my company and the big guns for this client met up to have lunch. I had to tag along.

The thing is, this client's site had a floor dedicated to their executives's lunches and entertaining what nots. Stretch your imagination a bit further and you can come up with some interesting visions of what happens on this floor. But I digress. You see, the lunch room where we were at was one of those small private intimate affairs, all the better to merge and acquire you my dear. There was a table set for 10 with all the trimmings befitting the stature of the .....ummm....eaters?!, a lounge area near to it where you can have pre-meal drinks and post-meal cigars and whiskey, and a private exit onto a large balcony area, which can accomadate a cocktail party for about 30 souls, that overlooks the entire city of Bangkok this side of the river.

The view was, for want of a better word, stunning. You could see entire length and breadth of greater Bangkok with the Chao Phraya river twisiting and bending the boundaries of a city physically divided in two and yet joined by impressive bridgeworks. It's rarefied air I tell you. Of course we sat down for lunch at the table.

The weight of executive powers at the table was deafening in that no one talked while the food was served and the first crack at splitting the iceberg was a comment about someone's weight loss. I won't go into details of what was discussed save that gorgeous food was served but blimey! How do you enjoy lunch in the midst of "diplomatic" business talk? I felt distinctly under-dressed even in my best shirt and best trousers *grin*. These guys pluck out suits from the premier line at....ummmm....Harrods...no wait..it's that expensive enough? Yeah it is. The heavy presence arounnd the table's liable to constipate you. But hey! Free food is free food.

So that was a perfect way to start a week. Now I'm on Wednesday and going home tomorrow cos my laptop crashed because Microsoft's new updates nuked it. When it rains it pours.

Do You See Me?

Heh.....I'm up to my old tricks again. It's Saturday evening and I'm still in the office. Big surprise.

It's been more than a month since the last update. Big surprise there too *grin*.

Anyways, was just reading this at Newsweek. It's the weekly coverage of the Apprentice Season 3 but I won't spoil it for you. For those of who who have not heard of the Apprentice, much less seen it, it's touted as a "15 week job interview". To grossly simplify it, The Apprentice is about a bunch of people tossed together to work as a team yet compete against each other in completing numerous tasks and ingratiate themselves to one Mr. Donald Trump in the hopes that he might hire one very lucky candidate to work for him. It's a dubious honor if you ask me.

So it's an intense 15 weeks of back biting, blame shifting, gross incompetence and other bits that is disturbing in its pleasurable voyeurism.

It's an hour each week about people doing what is necessary, by any and all means, to succeed. It is haunting in its depiction of the human condition about what the obsessive need to succeed that drives us when we're stacked against each other with a lucrative carrot dangling right in front of our noses. To me, what is on The Apprentice is what happens in a typical working day, magnified by several factors. Due to its causatic setup, things happen at break neck speed than say a normal week in the office. The back biting in the series is brought to the fore front by necessity of enticing voyeurs, like me, to stay tuned. In a regular office setting, that same back biting is far more insidious and bubbles just below the surface of an office work life.

What caught my attention was something the author of this piece tagged to the end of his article about the particpants's driving need to succeed, "They are so obsessed with success that they're destroying their ability to be successful".

Now, let's transpose that particular line and put it in a church context. What is the measure of a succesful church growth? For the better part of my life, I took it to mean bigger is better thus equals success. Mega-churches, the drive to recruit converts so that the declaration of saved souls becomes the defining KPI, a bigger and better worship team, the convinced need to acquire the bells and whistles of a professional audio visual studio to enhance the perceived worship experience and the continued measurement of tithing of healthy church giving.

It is impressive isn't it? A church numbering in the thousands, that come Sunday worship, when the teeming throng sing out a mighty song, that the ground shakes and the heavens exclaim! Okay, so I'm being melodramatic here. I'm in a cynical mood. Shoot me....*grin*

In the last few months, I've read experiences of numerous Christian bloggers seeking refuge from these successful churches, those that were turned away because of the callousness of Christians and I've listened to stories of questioning people that might have found Christ except for the immeasureable hurt of judgement that Christians like me dough out without thinking. I accept that these are broad generalizations but I think it will work for this purpose. I'm too tired right now to delve into specifics.

Now we hear of more mega-church project and it seems that churches are tripping over themselves to top one another. Millions are poured into these projects. I'm wondering if we as Christians are tricking ourselves into believing that we can be a blessing and win people over to Christ by becoming fixated on monuments, power rallies and the irresistable pull of membership in the thousands?

Right now, my heart is aching and heavy. I'm cut off from the fellowship of brothers and sisters in my church and I feel as if I'm cut off from God but intellectually I know that I'm not. Most of all though, I miss my wife. The extended absences, the pressures at work of cleaning up a mismanaged project and the isolation is taking a toll on me. I read that line again from the article above and I read DB's preamble on his website by Soren Kierkegaard. I'm in a position that I thought I would never find myself guilty off. My work has overrun my priorities to my wife and God.

I'm wondering how is it for people with burdens similar to mine, who find their way into our large magnificent churches, seeking comfort yet cry silently in one corner, the masses, oblivious to this individual, singing jubilant songs of praise to a God who looks for that silent crier?