yes, no, or wait a while.

I was always taught that God always answers your prayers one of three ways: Yes, no, or wait a while. I prefer immediately answered prayers (who doesn't?) and I always have the hardest with waiting a while. 

Peppy got a new job. It's kind of crazy how it happened. 

When Peppy got hired at his current job, his title was Red Bull Evolution Manager. He had a guy above him who, for lack of a better term, was an alcoholic. We'll call him Ron. Peppy was constantly picking up Ron's slack, and when it came time for presentations, Peppy would do all the work and Ron would take the credit. This happened for almost three years. If Ron ever worked from home, you could call him at 10 am and he would already be drunk. Peppy and I would often talk about how Ron even still had his job. Everyone knew he was drunk all the time. Why didn't they fire him? It made no sense to me, but I prayed daily for the situation.

Last June, Ron was found half-naked wandering around a neighborhood very early in the morning, looking through trashcans. When the police approached him he said someone had stolen his drugs and put them in a trashcan somewhere. Needless to say, he was arrested. And then he was fired.

Instead of moving Peppy up to Ron's position, the owners of the company kept giving him the run around. They told him to hang on just a little bit longer and he would be in the running for the position when it opened up. They gave him little bonuses to string him along, like a donkey with a carrot. It all seemed very manipulative to me. This suddenly one day in September everyone goes to work one day and learns that the company is being bought out. It suddenly made sense why Ron was never fired, because the owners knew they were selling the company and soon he wouldn't be their problem anymore.

This whole time I was thinking Peppy just needed to look for another job. I was afraid that his job would become redundant with another company swallowing this particular business. But he decided to wait and see what would happen. At the time, we were just thankful that Peppy had a job at all. We were in the process of getting into our new house and buying furniture, and that would never happen if Peppy was unemployed. But this was hard for Peppy, because he really did believe he was getting Ron's job, and now he suddenly had to face the fact that he had been strung along.

December rolls around and the new company takes over. Some of Peppy's team kept their jobs, while others were let go. Unfortunately Peppy never went back to his official Evolution Manager position, and instead had to be a delivery/sales person and then come back home and do his regular computer work. Since January he has been leaving the house around 6:30 every morning and usually doesn't get home until after 7 pm (on a good night.) There were many days the kids didn't even see him at all. And because Peppy doesn't have a trucking license, he was scramming his car with as much merchandise and display stuff he could carry. Not to mention the hundreds of miles and wear and tear he was putting on his car. ALSO Peppy made salary, so it's not like he was wracking up on the hardcore overtime. And guess what? You'd think grocery stores and merchants would have some empathy considering the plague has slowed everything down to snail speed, but they didn't. And Peppy would often be the receiving end of some ticked off manager. His phone rang nonstop. The moment he hung up, it would ring again. I honestly do not know how he has put up with it for so long. I would have been insane by now. 

All employees that stayed on with the new company were given a 90 day probationary period and then they would determine their salary. The new company met with the employees a few weeks ago and Peppy learned that basically despite all the insane hours he had been putting in NOTHING had changed for him. They were continuing to expect the same amount of time and effort from him. He was basically working his life away, and if you divided the hours he was actually working by his salary, he could make more at McDonalds. 

A couple weekends ago we went to a family birthday party. Peppy was talking to his cousin who had been doing a data analyst work from home job for an artisan brewery out of Wisconsin since last year, but he recently got hired for a local IT job he really wants. The work from home job asked if he knew anyone who could fill the position. Peppy talked to the people for an hour and a half and they immediately hired him and asked when he could start.

I think this will be great for his mental health and stress. He'll have time to grill out and work in the garden again, which he loves doing. And he'll be able to use his home office and see the kids much more. It's funny because I prayed for Peppy to get a work from home job so that we could travel more, and now that we aren't even in the RV he lands this job. 

He put in his two week notice today and of course his bosses wanted to sit down with him and see what they could do to persuade him to stay. Money is not the issue. I mean, obviously you need money to survive. But this job was killing him. It was like a never ending carousel, but finally he got bucked off. This is nothing short of an answered prayer. 

I have prayed for Peppy's work situation for years. Sometimes it felt hopeless because there was never anything I could do to make things easier for him. I could see the toil it was taking on him and all I could do was just hand it over to God. So here's your call to not stop praying. God hears your prayers and sometimes we forget that a prayer has already been answered, it just hasn't played out in real time yet. 

Therefore whatever you ask for in prayer, believe you have received it, and it will be yours. Mark 11:24