Yesterday I spent mostly working on Client #2’s project. Yesterday was the deadline for the first section of it, and I never like to miss a deadline. I am waiting on things from someone else, so it is not entirely finished, but there is a good amount of material for Client #2 to work with. Today I have things to do for Clients 1 and 3, and I also have a job interview.

Again, this is good news but only a little bit good. The interview is with the university’s temp agency. They called to offer me a week in the bookstore, which I would have done gladly, but they needed me on Saturday, when I will be doing a presentation on missionary hymns of the Victorian era. The woman who called was understanding, and asked me to come in and chat anyway.

The lady at the regular temp agency sent me away, as you may recall, and she was right. I can’t afford to work for $8 an hour, so she really had nothing to offer me. The university temp agency is willing to talk to me, though, even though they have seen my resume, so I am hoping that they have some other options. In fact, on a fantasy level, I’m hoping that they will have plenty of work at some medium pay scale that would allow me to do my freelance work and yet not feel that the wolf was ever at the door.

Last night’s speaker talked about pity parties. I don’t use that term, though I admire it. She talked about how throwing yourself a pity party is a way of making much of yourself and little of God.

Now, as you know, I recently spent some time wallowing in misery. I think that’s an appropriate response to bad news. We’re human, after all, we’re going to be upset by some things, and I think it’s best to wallow wholeheartedly in misery for a brief, convenient period so you can get back to normal life as soon as possible.

The speaker actually used the term “wallow.” However, she said “wallowing in self-pity,” which sounds a lot less noble than “wallowing in misery.” She said that throwing yourself a pity party says that you are not happy with God’s choices, which is another way of saying that you think your choices are better than God’s, and that you are in fact more important than God.

We are talking, here, about a God who allows all manner of horrible things to happen in the world. I know people who would agree with the speaker, on the grounds that they should be confident that God is going to do what’s best for them, so they should know that there is a happy ending coming up. Some of these folks have pointed out to me that there are several plausible happy endings to my unemployment, all of which could see me in a much better position next year than I was in last year. They think that faith should cause me to believe that God has one of those plans in mind for me.

But God’s plan might involve some horrible suffering on my part, for all I know. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a good plan, from a God-sized perspective. I could be random collateral damage in a grand scheme that just isn’t even about me. I could be scheduled to be a bad example to someone: see, this woman always made job choices based on how fun they were, and look at her now! I could be part of God’s happy ending for someone else. I could be slated for a happy ending, but only after some long ennobling suffering.

God does lots of things that I don’t agree with. Fortunately, the position of God is filled, and there isn’t any committee to oversee the works of God and approve them before they occur, so I can disagree all I want, secure in the knowledge that my disagreeing has no effect and will not mess up any grand schemes.

As it happens, I am through with my wallowing, whether in misery or in self-pity, so the question of whether or not one should have a pity party was strictly academic for me. If the wolf does indeed come to the door before I am once again steadily employed, though, I will be tempted to throw another pity party. Between now and then, I can contemplate whether it’s a good thing to do or not.

And maybe it won’t even come to that.