The Last Supper

The approval committee for social services only meets once a month so we had three weeks after we met with Violet to wait before we heard about our approval or what I hoped would be our approval. Those three weeks to most would have seemed like a life time but for me it flew by because so much was happening at work.

The first round of lay offs had happened and now I found myself sitting in a room of my peers listening to the President of our division telling us that the entire division was shutting down. His words rang thru the silent conference room and with each word he said the faces around the room began to change. As each of peers digested the information I watched the wild fire begin and most of it started with anger and then tears followed. I think I was the only one in the room that was over joyed at the news. The decision had been made for me I was going to be a stay at home mom. I didn't have to worry about trying to juggle both my career and my family. I didn't have to think about leaving Tina, Rebecca and Jackson in a bind because I wanted to stay home with my child...now I just had to trust God would find a way financially for us to make it.

Over the next few weeks many of my peers were given their severance and were gone. While those of us that served as the "close down team" did the best we could to wrap things up. Jackson and I were on the road a lot that month. I think that month is when our relationship turned into life long friendship. We had to say good bye to many of our co-workers and for him employees....we heard lots of stories of people in fear of their future because they were out of work and we saw many tears. But thru it all we would always find ourselves at the end of the day talking about something that made us laugh because we couldn't take on any more sorrow.

On one or our last trips out we had Tina and Rebecca with us. The four of us spent our days in long meetings and our evenings at dinners talking about our future. Rebecca longed to be back in the social services world. She missed feeling like she was helping someone in the world be better and she wanted to move back to her home town to be closer to her family. Tina wanted to win the lotto and travel the world but with a small child at home she was job searching for another bean counting position and Jackson well he wanted to an entrepreneur by opening his own pub but instead he was going to follow the money and stay with the company by going to another division out of state. And I planned on getting home and finally being a mom.

As we sat at that table eating dinner our last night together I felt very sad. I had come to depend on these people for support and I trusted them with my thoughts, feelings, hopes and dreams....we had become a family not just friends. I worried about losing them if we weren't working together all the time. Would we make time to see one another? If Rebecca and Jackson left the state how would we make that work? I loved them and I knew I needed them for the journey I was about to take....and as we sat at that table that night I prayed silently to God....Please let them I love them and God please find a way to keep them in my world.