Last year at this time, I was wondering if I was going to make it to the next round of interviews for the job I currently hold.  The grant under which I was working was being eliminated because the donations to the non-profit that was funding my position at the parish had fallen off by 50%. I was the “last one hired, first one fired,” as they say.
I wondered if I would be able to pay for my kids’ college education.  I asked myself, “Will I have to sell my house and downsize?” “How will I pay for the medical care that my son needs?” Last of all, I even asked, “Lord, what in the world are you doing with my life?”
The demons that those who are unemployed fight off are named Loneliness, Depression, Despair, Self-Doubt, Self-Criticism, and Fear, among many.  They tug at the psyche, grab at the heart and laugh at the scars they leave behind.
On a weekday after December 6, 2010, my second interview for the position of Director of University Ministry, I was called by the search committee and offered two days in January to interview.  I picked the Friday, because Friday is the day that the sins of the world were nailed to a tree.  I vowed that I would say a novena to the saint whose feast day it was. Inadvertently, I had chosen the Feast of Saint Agnes, the patron who led me to Catholicism.
When I was offered the job on this college campus to assist others in knowing the Lord from within their own conscience, I could feel the deliverance of the Lord from the demons of unemployment. Weary, yet on my way to being renewed, I felt something that I had lost.  That feeling was the feeling of being thankful.  
I was thankful that the people of the University had given good recommendations of me to the search committee.  I was thankful that God had not forgotten me (as if he would). I was thankful that the Lord would grant that someone like me, little, insignificant in the cosmos, a chance to serve him once again.
At the last new hire orientation, as I was getting ready to leave, Bill Lopez, our newly hired Team Leader of the Service Desk in IT, stopped me and asked me to remember the unemployed.  He knew the situation of unemployment for 18 months.  He said his life turned around when he read Job 42:10, “And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he prayed for his friends.”  As he explained, it was after he had stopped focusing on himself, and started focusing on serving others, that he began to be restored.
Thankful cannot even describe how Bill and I feel about having a job, let alone doing something for God which gives additional meaning to our lives.  The Detroit Lions and the stuffed feeling of Turkey breast, stuffing and my sister’s sweet potato pie, don’t even compare to the comfort that has been provided to Bill and myself by God, this University and all of you.
I say, “Thank you,” to the Lord our God this Thanksgiving and I ask you to look around you and do the same.
Mark Kurowski is the Director of University Ministry at Benedictine University and the founder of MySpiritualAdvisor.com. He can be reached at mkurowski@ben.edu. To listen to his weekly podcasts, go to http://MySpiritualAdvisor.com.