Driven Decisions: Surviving Hard Times Through Faith, Hope and Trust

By John Gilpin Miller

How does a family make it through hard times? How does a family face a challenge like having the "main breadwinner" lose a job, staying unemployed for over a year, and still manage to stay together with a roof over their heads through that time? It takes sacrifice, determination, strength when you're at your weakest, and a lot of love.

Mostly, it takes a lot of prayer, a lot of faith, a lot of hope, and a lot of trust in a power that's unseen. It takes a willingness to ask for guidance, to leave those burdens on more powerful shoulders.

Author John Gilpin Miller, his wife Amy, and their children Curtis, Grant, and Alicia have lived through those times. "Driven Decisions" provides a glimpse into some of those challenging experiences, and the faith, hope and trust that helped to see them through. This book is a collection of faith-based articles from the author's blog "A View From The Middle (Class)" which was born out of that time. It's meant to provide some insight into the struggles a family goes through when its back is against the wall. It's meant to inspire.

"Driven Decisions" is Miller's second published ebook. He's also published memoirs in "Simple Man: Learning To Live Without A Father, From Generation To Generation" which details his father's life as well as his own in narrative form.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Gilpin Miller
• Release date: Sep 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311173560

Book preview

Introduction

When you lose a job, it’s like a kick in the gut. When you lose a job with a family to support, the kick is magnified.

That’s how it felt when I lost a job as a computer programmer on October 28, 2011. It was a Friday afternoon, a sunny day. My family – as Seventh-day Adventists – would begin observing our Sabbath at sundown that evening.

How do I tell my family what happened, and when do I tell them? I wondered inside. As I made the hour-long commute from work with my personal belongings packed hurriedly into a couple of boxes sitting in the trunk and back seat of my car, and as I drove along northbound on Interstate 15, I made a decision: I wouldn’t spoil our Sabbath, nor would I spoil our weekend with such devastating news. As I drove, I made the decision to wait until the following Sunday night to gather the family together and let them know why I wouldn’t be going to work as usual the next day. As I made that final drive from work, I even made that driven decision to store those boxes of my belongings for a few days in a storage area in the basement of our church so it wouldn’t raise suspicions at home, just until after I broke the news.

It was a shock to the family, to say the least. Above all, I emphasized that if we were going to make it through that period of unemployment, we needed to stay strong as a family. We needed to pray like never before, hold firm to our faith even in the hardest times. I believed that with every ounce of my being, because of a calming sensation that swept over me after a lengthy prayer one blistering hot day around two months before when I saw and heard the first warning signs that my job could be threatened.

That calming sensation came after I prayed, asking what I should do if I were to lose that job. Computer programming wasn’t my first love as a career. That first love was writing, and it was something I was paid to do for about 16 years, starting in my senior year of high school as a sports stringer at the daily newspaper in Idaho Falls, Idaho. It turned into something that would carry me as far as a managing editor’s position at another daily in Blackfoot, Idaho, in my mid-20’s.

That question of what I should do was answered with a thought that popped into my mind: Witness. Witness to as many people as possible. At the time, I had no idea how I’d go about doing that, but at least a starting point came to me when I actually lost that programming job, and my family’s home and security were suddenly on the line. I’d search for another job, but I’d also go back to my first love of writing and try my hand at this blogging thing.

On November 10, 2011, after doing some serious research into the game, I launched the blog A View From The Middle (Class). It was part diary, part daddy blog, part soapbox for my political views, a place to share my love of music and occasionally my love of sports, talking about what it was like to be out of work and looking for another job. It was also a place to share my deepest thoughts and experiences regarding my faith, pouring out words from the heart. I shared some of my deepest emotions from some of our toughest, most challenging times. I wanted to show that my family could make it through any challenge, no matter what obstacles were thrown at us.

There were things we experienced in that period of time that defy explanation, making me believe that there was something greater in control that would lead us through those hard times. There were decisions that were made that were true leaps of faith. I like to think of them as driven decisions, driven by a holy spirit. They guided us through some dark times, like a ray of sunlight through a long tunnel. At times, when we’re wondering what we need to do to make it through, we need to be willing to surrender to that holy spirit and let it lead the way. It takes faith, it takes hope, and it takes a whole lot of trust.

I had a goal while writing the blog from its inception: Put out something new on a daily basis for at least an entire year, at least one new article per day. I reached that goal, often putting out at least two articles per day. There were articles to entertain, articles to get people to think about the world around them, articles aimed at inspiring people. I started seeing results very quickly, gaining faithful followers and new online friends from as far away as Canada and Norway just a couple of days into it. Articles that I wrote on helping the homeless inspired one woman from the Los Angeles area to write to me asking how she could do the same thing in her own area.

I wanted to use the blog as a witnessing tool, and it did just that. Even non-believers followed and appreciated what I had to say. Now, my goal is to reach an even bigger audience.

What you see in the following pages are selections from my blog, focusing on those driven decisions that helped to see us through those hard times. We’re not out of the woods yet, not by a long shot. But even in the hard times we face today, we keep reaching for those rays of hope to see us through, we continue to pray for guidance that can lead us to driven decisions.

If we can do it, anyone can.

Welcome to the Land of the Jobless (Day 2)

Posted on November 12, 2011

Saturday is our Sabbath day until sundown, our day of rest. On this particular Saturday, however, a couple of us were fighting colds and we decided to stay home and rest. I needed it. I fell asleep like normal the night before, but in the middle of the night I woke up and my mind started churning, going over what was facing us. I had a hard time falling back to sleep, but with deep breathing and some prayer I eventually did.

My emotions were up and down, like a rollercoaster. At times I’d be very positive, and at other times I’d feel frightened to death for my family’s future. When I’d start sinking, I’d start going back to praying … the same thing I did a couple of months earlier when the warning signs started hitting. When they hit then, I said a long prayer from deep within for the supreme being to watch over my family, to guide us, to help us through whatever might happen. Now that it actually had happened, I fell back on those prayers again.

I started doing some research into blogging like I’d never researched it before, just trying to think of anything I could do with the strongest talents that I have in order to help pull us out of it. Could I make a living writing a blog? Could I turn