By Carey Miller
‘New Beginnings’
I am still getting through a tough season of loss and struggle.
Too many of us have lost a loved one in 2021. Losing my big sister Heidi will forever affect my life and the decisions I make. Our days are numbered and every day is precious.
Life rarely goes according to plan…and that can be hard to accept. My career change in 2021 was progressing very well as a truck driver until September. As you may know, I started the year doing long haul in the USA . In May, the film industry was booming and was paying a premium for truck drivers to move film equipment.
Long story short…I have learned how volatile the film industry can be…it’s feast or famine. Only after working in the industry for 4 months did I find myself out of work. There were rumors that things would pick up but they never did.
Being out of work can take a toll on us can’t it?
All your insecurities eventually start to surface. Many thanks go out again to those men in my life that have encouraged and prayed for my employment.
Thankfully during this season we had an emergency fund but it had run out. My goal was to find a job that would pay well and be flexible enough to still do film work. That wasn’t happening at first….until the last minute…I was just about to accept a really cool job doing long haul shipping exotic cars across Canada and the USA .
‘In the last hour’
Local jobs seemed very hard to find with the criteria I had. Going back to long haul seemed like the only option. However, in the last hour, as cool as car hauling would be, the time away from home would be too much. It required me to be gone for months at a time. Like I said in the beginning, the journey of losing my sister has changed me. The thought of being away from home was literally making me sick .
‘Prayer might actually work’
The morning I was supposed to accept the car hauling job my wife Janice and I decided to pray. We prayed for direction, protection and provision. We also prayed for strength if the car hauling was meant to be. We also believe what the scriptures teach that if 2 or 3 agree in prayer our Father in heaven will be with us. For this reason we also asked a core group of friends to join us in prayer.
‘Is this the answer?’
Within the next couple of hours I was contacted by a recruiter for Superior Propane. By the end of that same day, I had a phone interview and a zoom interview booked for the next day. By the end of the week, I was offered a full time position or had the option to take a seasonal position. Although they preferred for me to take the full time position, I felt I needed to choose the seasonal job.
‘The perfect fit’
The Superior Propane position perfectly fits my values and goals. First, I am home every night and I have a 4-day work week. My contract ends in April, which allows me to dedicate my summers to working in the film industry.
Despite our prayers for my sister’s healing from cancer not being what we hoped, I still believe in prayer. I don’t understand how healing prayer works; however, I am more familiar with praying for strength, wisdom and understanding.
I am trusting that in time God will provide clear understanding as to Heidi’s loss. I am so grateful for the opportunity we had to travel to New Brunswick twice to reconnect with Heidi, Jon, Mitch and Faith — grateful that the film industry slowed down and gave me the time off.
If you’re going through a tough season, please feel free to reach out and connect. We are here to love and support each other when life doesn’t go according to plan.
Call to Action…
Can you relate to Carey’s story? Do you have questions? Do you have an encouraging story or thought to share? Email us or leave a comment below.
The Genesis Man Project 
Hey Israel,
Thanks for sharing Carey’s story. I can relate with her when you pray for healing and it doesn’t seem to work.
This was what I felt when my dad passed away in 2012. As you know, we had the whole church (locally and nationally) praying healing for him. I even had a preacher, that I looked up to as the time, tell me that I got to pray harder if I want to see my dad healed. But he didn’t get healed. His illness progressed each month. And he eventually died in the hospital in palative care.
My dad’s death should have caused me to doubt if prayer works like Carey, but for some reason I didn’t. I believe it had to do with a series of lessons that God put in my lap two years before my dad died. It was from Peter Scazzero”s seminar My wife and I went to on “Emotional Heathy Spirituality.” I later bought the materials and studied them in-depthly. It introduced to me very difficult truths about God and how we are to walk out faith out.
As I was going through it, I didn’t want to hear these teaching because it was going against the kind of Christianity I wanted. I grew up in church that didn’t have specifics teachings on how we are to manage our emotional heath. This explains why many faithful churchgoing Christians are living emotionally unhealthy disgruntled lives. This is because we have stepped away from spiritual disciplines that these teaching brings back to take care of our emotional heath. Such disciplines include: Weekly Sabbath Rest, Scripture Meditation, Lectio Devina Prayers, Daily Prayers, Rule of life etc. These lessons taught me what Emotional Healthy Spirituality looks like and how to acquire it. It help me begin to understand where my emotional vulnerabilities and struggles come from, doing my family pictograms. It exposed the unhealthy balance that I was living with conserning my “being” and “doing.” It also taught me some very uncomfortable teachings on: 1) walking through my spirtual walls and 2) enlarging my soul through grief and loss.
These all were difficult lessons to swallow but the Lord knew I needed it. It challenged me in many blindspots I had concerning by faith walk and practical living. It was medicine to my soul.
I believe Lord brought me through these teachings to help prepare me for when my dad would die two years later. He brought me these teachings to help me live life in a way that is more healthy to my soul. It not only helped me understand how God works in bad experiences and unanswered prayers, but it also emotionally prepared to navigate through these bad experiences in a healthy manner.
I believe these ancient spirtual disciplines, that these lessons uncovered for me, need to be reclaimed by many Christians in our western culture today.
Blessings!!
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