Overqualified, Again

She said it warmly. That is the part that has been going round.

You would be wasted here. Which is a lovely thing to say to somebody, and it is the fourth version of the same thing you have heard since February, and the fourth one is where the meaning changed.

The first time you took it as a compliment and went home and repeated it to your husband.

The second time you noticed it slightly.

The third time you sat in the car afterwards.

And this fourth time you nodded, and thanked her, and got as far as the end of the car park before you thought: I do not think this word means what I have been letting it mean.

Because it keeps arriving instead of a job.

You have thought about what to do with it. You are not going to pretend to be less than you are on a form and you are not going to leave things off and you should not have to. You have thought about explaining, in the room, that you are not going to leave in six months, and you have half done that twice and heard how it sounds.

Four times. Warmly, every time. And a growing suspicion that the word is doing work nobody is saying out loud.

The book was written before there was a day in it

There is a verse in Psalm 139 that puts a person's whole life in a very specific place.

Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.Psalm 139:16

In thy book. Not in a database, not in an assessment, not in the shorthand a busy person reaches for at the end of an interview.

And the timing in it is the extraordinary part. Written when as yet there was none of them. Before there was a day, the days were written. Which means whatever it is you are for was not decided in February and it is not being decided in car parks.

You are written down somewhere no hiring process has access to. I am not putting my own opinion over you here. Scripture says in Thy book all my members were written, Psalm 139:16, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and sets it down in a car at the edge of a car park.

Nothing here is advice

Not one word of this is about your applications.

I do not know your field or the four rooms you have been in. Nobody who was not there has any business suggesting what you might have said differently, and there is a particular unkindness in implying that a better answer would have fixed this by now.

So there is nothing here about how to present it, what to leave off, or how to reassure a panel. Nothing here reads four polite refusals as a report on your effort. Scripture never once reads a closed door that way, Revelation 3:8, and the Holy Spirit is not the voice suggesting you should have handled the room better.

You have not been overlooked by God since February. That was true in the first car park and it is true in the fourth.

What the word is actually doing to you

Here is the part worth looking at, because it is not about the jobs.

A refusal that arrives as a compliment is harder to put down than a plain one. A plain no can be filed. You would be wasted here cannot, because it praises you while it closes the door, and the mind cannot work out where to put it.

So it goes somewhere unhelpful. It becomes evidence that you are the problem in a way you cannot fix, because the thing being objected to is not a deficiency you could work on. It is you.

That is the injury. Not four refusals. One suspicion, arriving four times, that what is wrong is not something you did. Scripture never wrote that suspicion, Psalm 139:16, and the Holy Spirit has not been the voice supplying it in car parks.

You are not a problem to be solved. Scripture says I am fearfully and wonderfully made, marvelous are Thy works, Psalm 139:14, and the Holy Spirit is not looking for a smaller version of you to send into a room.

Provision now, and the door later

Two things are true and February keeps welding them together.

There is work you are made for that has not arrived. And there is this month, which has been got through, in a way you would not have described as possible if somebody had shown it to you in advance.

I am not going to call the second the answer to the first. It is not, and I am not going to dress up six months of this as a plan you were handed. Scripture is willing to say daily bread and stop there, Matthew 6:11, and the Holy Spirit does not need a thin spring explained before He will be in it.

But your household has been fed through four polite noes, and that is not luck. You are provided for while the door is shut. Scripture says your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things, Luke 12:30, and the Holy Spirit lets a person hold that and their frustration at once without either being a lie.