I pulled the car into the garage and got out, just like every night for the past 16 years. The difference was, I wouldn’t have a job to go to in the morning. I’d known this day was coming, but that didn’t make it any easier.<\/p>\n
I slammed the car door. I was—no, used to be, I reminded myself—a VP in technology for a national bank until it collapsed in the recession.<\/p>\n
I’d put my heart and soul into my job, helping build the tech-support department from a few employees into a division running computer networks at branches all over the country.<\/p>\n
Not only did I work long hours, I was on call 24 hours a day. Weekends and holidays too. If someone had a tech problem, even at 2:00 A.M. Christmas morning, I was on it.<\/p>\n
My kids joked that even though they were the teenagers, I was the one who was glued to my cell phone and had to be told not to text at the dinner table. That’s if I sat down at the table at all. Usually, I would set my plate on the arm of my chair and eat while I checked my laptop.<\/p>\n
I paced the dim garage, wanting to kick something, smash it into a million pieces, the way my life felt like it had been smashed to pieces.<\/p>\n
I knew I was better off than most people—I’d gotten a decent severance package, and my wife, Michelle, had been able to go to back to work full time as an office manager once we heard my job was threatened.<\/p>\n
But our three kids would be going to college—our son, TJ, was a high school senior, and the girls, Sarah and Tara, were in ninth grade—and I wanted to give them the education and opportunities they deserved. God, if I can’t provide for my family, <\/em>I asked, what good am I?<\/em><\/p>\n A shaft of light streamed through the window, as if beckoning me. I opened the garage door and stepped out into our yard. Michelle and I were raising our family in the house I grew up in.<\/p>\n The lawn and flower beds that my mom had tended so carefully were overrun with weeds. There was a Japanese maple in the middle of the yard that I remembered my parents planting when I was a boy. It needed pruning. I kept meaning to get out there but I’d let it go.<\/p>\n Treasure this time.<\/em><\/p>\n The thought came out of nowhere. Definitely not from me. But clear, clear as could be. Treasure one of the worst days and biggest losses in my life? <\/em>I shook my head. I couldn’t get distracted by random thoughts. The clock was ticking. I needed to get busy finding a new job.<\/p>\n I lumbered up to the house, my belly jiggling. I’d put on a lot of weight, let myself go over the years—no time to exercise with my crazy hours.<\/p>\n Michelle greeted me at the door with a hug. “It’s going to be okay,” she said. “We’ll get through this together. I thought we could have a family meeting. The kids have been worried.” I was the parent; I was supposed to do the worrying. The kids were supposed to enjoy being kids.<\/p>\n We got together in the living room. “I’m sorry, Dad,” TJ said. “I know how much your job meant to you.” His concern was mirrored in the girls’ faces. When had they gotten so mature?<\/p>\n “I’ll take care of this,” I told them. “I’m going to work round the clock to find a new job and get our lives back to normal.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n After the kids went to their rooms, Michelle laid her head on my shoulder. “Don’t feel like you have to jump back into something stressful,” she said. “We can get by on my income for a while. Maybe you should think of this time as a break…a sabbatical. You deserve one.”<\/p>\n A sabbatical? Was she kidding? This was no time to rest. If anything, I needed to work even harder.<\/p>\n The next morning I got up before everyone else, made a pot of coffee and opened my laptop. I searched job sites, companies in the area with big tech departments. I e-mailed friends with connections. By then Michelle and the kids were up, the house bustling.<\/p>\n “Take some time for yourself,” Michelle said again before she left for work. “This isn’t a problem you need to solve today.”<\/p>\n By midmorning the quiet of the house was driving me crazy. I missed the buzz of the office. I’d updated my résumé and applied for a couple of jobs. Now what? I walked outside to clear my head. My gaze fell on those overgrown flower beds. At least that was a problem I could do something about.<\/p>\n I found the hoe in the garage, behind an old deflated soccer ball. I hadn’t even been working an hour before my back and arms were aching. I’d only cleared a small patch.<\/p>\n Winded, I made my way to the backyard. Not the beautiful yard we had dreamed of. I’d always planned to fix it up. Another thing I’d let go.<\/p>\n I went inside and checked my e-mail. Nothing.<\/p>\n The kids got home midafternoon. “I’m bored,” Sarah said an hour later. “There’s nothing to do.”<\/p>\n I looked up from my laptop. “I’m sorry, honey,” I said. “I’m busy right now. Maybe later.” She nodded and wandered down the hall.<\/p>\n I turned back to my laptop. But I couldn’t focus on job hunting. I kept thinking about how Sarah and I used to watch a lot of soccer together before I got so busy. Manchester United, in the English Premier League, that was our team.<\/p>\n I went to their web page. There was a game the next day, Saturday, at 5:00 A.M. It wasn’t televised, but we could watch it on the computer.<\/p>\n “Hey, Sarah,” I called down the hall. She was thrilled about my idea, even if it meant getting up at the crack of dawn.<\/p>\n The sun was barely peeking over the horizon when we flipped open the laptop the next day. We cheered so loudly I feared we’d wake up everyone else. “That was awesome,” Sarah said.<\/p>\n “Let’s do it again sometime,” I said.<\/p>\n And we did, every week after. I even got us new matching Manchester United jerseys.<\/p>\n I settled into a new routine. I still applied for jobs. Still put in hours every day in front of the computer. But now I took breaks to do other stuff, the things I’d neglected when I was working all the time.<\/p>\n I started putting in a sprinkler system and the new lawn I’d planned for so long. Just a few hours here and there. But it began to take shape. So did I. With the physical labor, the extra weight dropped off, and I felt healthier than I had in ages.<\/p>\n One day I walked into the empty family room and looked at our pool table, which was gathering dust. The kids were always saying they didn’t have anything to do. I decided it was time the room got used. I cleaned off the table and bought some video games while I was at it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Soon TJ, Sarah and Tara were bringing their friends over after school. There’d be so many teenagers hanging out in the family room, I took to calling it “the kid zone.” But I was the one having a ball. They were loud. And hungry. No problem. I went to Costco and stocked up on snacks.<\/p>\n Weekends Michelle and I gardened together. The flower beds, the Japanese maple looked great; Mom would’ve been proud. On summer evenings the five of us hung out on the deck while I made dinner on the grill.<\/p>\n One day I noticed TJ sitting alone, looking pensive. I knew he had worries about going to college and where his life was headed. Some of his friends had graduated the year before, and he’d lost touch with them.<\/p>\n “TJ, I know how it feels to lose something,” I began. “I wish I knew how to fix it. But with some things, I’ve discovered, you just have to turn them over to God.”<\/p>\n “I know, Dad,” he said. “I learned that from watching you, how you’ve handled being unemployed. You might have been stressed but you never let it affect our family. You kept us together.”<\/p>\n I looked at my son, and it hit me. This was the last year he’d be home. The girls would be off to college soon too. If I hadn’t had this time with them, I’d be wishing for it, praying for it. Maybe God had answered a prayer I hadn’t even said.<\/p>\n He gave me this time to treasure, to be the husband and father my family needed. I’d had the chance to find a healthy balance between work and home—a balance that even after I landed a new position with a great company, I have made sure to keep.<\/p>\n