A few years back, I applied for a chaplaincy position that entailed being based in the city but required me to ‘fly in/fly out’ to a distant northern town on a regular basis. I had spent some years living and working in the country with my husband, our own home rented out, but felt a strong pull to be closer to my mother. She was in her nineties and the position would have allowed me to continue in paid work while living-in with her a good percentage of the time. My husband supported my application, and if successful, planned to join me in the city as soon as he had employment. We would then move back into our own suburban home permanently and be able to visit my mother much more frequently.
My application was short-listed, invited to attend an interview in the city scheduled for an afternoon appointment. As we lived more than 600 kilometres away, we had to leave at the crack of dawn to allow time for ‘glitches’ and ended up arriving way ahead of the interview time because there were no glitches! With hours to fill, we checked the newspaper we’d brought with us to while away the hours between ‘driver’ shifts, and discovered there was a film showing at a cinema nearby. It was a perfect way to fill in the time before the interview but there was a catch, one we overlooked. The scheduled showing times for the film applied to ‘weekends only’ and we ended up sitting through a film that lasted over two hours! When we came out of the cinema, I missed my interview!
As devastating as that was, all finger-pointing aside, we turned around and travelled back to where we’d come from, too tired to bicker! No-one knew about our blunder, not even my mother. We hadn’t told her of our intentions, but less than a month later, she passed away from a chronic chest infection. If I’d attended that interview, it was likely I’d have been offered the position as I’d worked in the role for five years previously and had experience in remote locations.
In retrospect, it became obvious why the mix-up with timetables had occurred. Without that happening, I could have ended up locked into a city position I didn’t want, the purpose for my job change no longer existing. Not only would it have been a huge disruption to my life, but would have left my husband high and dry living in a country town on his own, me in my mother’s unit and her not with me. No, it was not allowed to happen. Was it a God intervention? I think so.