What Happened When My Husband Lost His Job

My husband is a Process Engineer by trade and, when we met, he’d been working in this position for about 10 years. He was working for a large corporation, making a really nice salary…enough for us to take some pretty exotic vacations. Like 2 weeks in the Bahamas, a week in Jamaica, and a week in Mexico. I worked too. Our household income was tapping on 6-digits and we had a really comfortable life.

At some point, everything in his work environment devolved; they started to cut corners in both the morality and ethics departments. He was starting to get more and more angry, acting in those emotions and treating his coworkers badly. We had a long talk about it and decided that it was not in his best spiritual interest for him to remain in that position. We prayed about it, seeking guidance in how we should respond to the situation. We knew what we wanted but tried our hardest to make sure that our desires were in line with what God would have us to do.

In 2014, we decided that he needed to leave his job and get a better one more suitable for his moral compass and sanity.

Except it was much harder to get another job than either of us anticipated.

My husband lost his job and for 9 months, I went to work every day, making sure that there was still some sort of income. He stayed at home and filled out dozens and dozens and dozens of applications…to no avail.

In addition to being only one working, I became frustrated because he was not helping around the house as much as I thought he should since be helping. What I didn’t know was. that he was depressed because he felt like he wasn’t being a man by being out of work. We didn’t communicate with each other because we were trying to show grace and patience and not vent our frustrations and emotions with one another.

It backfired spectacularly.

Where We Went Wrong

I began to be resentful because I was working all day long and then had to come home to clean and make dinner, while he played on the computer all day, sleeping and watching TV. We tried to hold in our true feelings, choosing to be nice to each other instead of being honest with each other and that boiled over into snarky remarks, glaring stares, and passive-aggressive interactions.

We chose to be nice rather than be truthful. I know now that if we had actually had the necessary conversations with each other, it would have been much easier to extend true grace and compassion, rather than tip-toeing around each other, with tempers simmering just below the surface. I would have known that he was dealing with depression and questioning his worth because he wasn’t able to find steady income. He would have known that I felt unappreciated and tired because I was working so hard to support his unemployment and our livelihood.

We prayed to God about making the decision that we made but we forgot to have faith in Him and His purpose for our lives. We asked Him to guide us and then ran right in front of His will.

 

What happened when my husband lost his job

We were forced to trust god

It took me almost the full 9 months to learn to trust God. And as I say that, I recognize the irony that the gestational period from conception {stepping out on faith} to birth {fully trusting in Him} is 9 months. In that time, I truly learned how to put patience, grace, and compassion into action. My husband spent the time that he wasn’t actively submitting applications, diving into the Scriptures and learning to listen to God.

He came out of this period with a job that allowed him to be set on the right path {that we still couldn’t see at the time.} He also listened hard enough to the Holy Spirit to hear Him say that counseling was the field he needed to pursue in order to make a difference in this world for the Kingdom.

we learned how to walk in faith

One of the biggest things that people don’t prepare for in marriage is change. Life brings change. Some of it will be incredibly positive, but a lot of it will be really uncomfortable. The way that you handle these changes will absolutely determine if your marriage will thrive or implode through the process.

The first thing I will emphatically tell you is that when your relationship goes through changes and growth pains, you have to put your faith in God. Mark 11:24 tells us, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” We learned that more than most when my husband lost his job. Whatever your relationship is going through, and despite the outcome, you have to have faith in God. We don’t always know what He has in store for us, but we have to trust that whatever it is, it’s the best thing for us. Your faith walk is an individual endeavor, in that you are responsible for strengthening that bond so that you can increase your faith. You are not responsible for another person’s faith in God any more than another person can be responsible for your faith in God.

we learned how to communicate

Second, the most overstated and underutilized phrase on the planet: Communication is key! No matter what is going on in your relationship, you have to communicate with each other. Communication and “talking at” each other are different conversations. You have to have a marriage that is open to God and to each other. In order to ensure that you are still walking together, you have to talk to each other. When my husband lost his job, the lack of communication almost broke us.  We were so afraid of having the hard conversations that we shut down and didn’t have any conversation at all. We started to allow a distance to grow between us and for the seeds of discord to be planted. We learned how to better communicate so that each person had a clearer understanding of the other person’s feelings, concerns, expectations, and goals. We were forced to remember that we had to work together to make it through this phase of our lives.

In your marriage, you may not have to worry about a time when your husband lost his job. You may have to deal with infertility, infidelity, time management, or even boredom. Whatever it is, remember these things:

• Trust God
• Walk in faith
• Continue healthy communication

Sticking to these fundamentals will keep you on the right path of walking forward in you marriage, no matter the trial.

What’s the hardest thing that you’ve faced as a couple? Let me know in the comments below!