Lacing up my steel-toed boots, I sat thinking about how a 20-year-old woman lands a summer job at a welding factory. I began to wonder why I didn’t think of becoming a lifeguard or at least do something that promoted getting a tan. My job search had been going since the spring, as I was facing coming home from school after my sophomore year of college with no cash and a whole lot of student loans. Through a variety of random circumstances I was “given the opportunity” to work at the welding factory. I had no idea how to weld, which worked out just fine for me because I was hired as the “manufacturing engineering intern.” Wait, I had no idea about anything to do with engineering either. (My major in college was mass communications.)
As I stepped out of my car, bagged lunch in hand, I felt a bit uneasy as I approached the white tin building for the first time. A factory whistle shouted out the start of the day and I hurried into the office to find someone to give me some directions or, I prayed, let me go before I even started. I was officially way over my head. I was taken to a cubicle and given a stack of papers detailing who knows what… it just looked like a bunch of numbers to me. A thin yellow highlighter was thrust in my face along with some instructions I listened to, but didn’t hear. And I began to tear up. How in the world was I going to make it in this place for a whole summer?
Three o’clock couldn’t come sooner that day and I ran to my car and pulled away from that awful, terrible prison they called a factory and sped home. Tears rolled down my cheeks before I even reached the front door of my home. I officially hated my job. And I was officially quitting. Pouring my heart out to my parents, I had myself convinced they’d understand the terrible circumstances they had just sent their baby into and insist that I quit and stay home. Umm, no. I got something like “you’re going to get up tomorrow and go back because you’re not a quitter.” And something else about “blah blah blah, you can’t judge a book by its cover… Blah blah blah you have to give it more than a day.”
The next day my spine cringed as the alarm woke me up at 5:30 am. Really, who needs tractor cabs welded together quite so early? I headed to work with the same expectation of getting handed a stack of papers with random, meaningless numbers. To my surprise, this morning was completely different. I was met at my cubicle by a skinny welder-turned-engineer who told me I was going with him to the shop floor to start writing manuals. I grabbed my NASCAR brand safety glasses provided to me by the factory and followed along.
As we made our way down the stair well and through the factory I could feel the temperatures rise from the office’s frigid, air-conditioned 65 degrees to at least over 100 degrees by the time our feet hit the shop floor. (I would eventually learn that the shop averaged around 90-100 degrees in the summer and would even make it up to 120 degrees during hot July days.) Passing through the small, neat and tidy “engineering” section of the shop we continued our walk through the remaining, dirty majority of the factory.
We immediately headed to a homemade ear plug dispenser, welded together to hold the variety of foam ear plugs available to all the employees, at the start of the shop floor. “Pick out the smallest earplugs in the bin!” my welder-turned-engineer boss yelled out to me over the hum of heavy machinery. Quickly, I opened the package of bright yellow foam ear plugs, squished them together as instructed, and stuffed them in my ears.
A few more steps into the factory and we had surprisingly made it to our weld station. I was introduced to a very annoyed-looking welder, given a dying laptop, large digital camera, and make shift table, and was told to start writing a manual on the doors the man was building. My boss returned to his office and I was left alone on the shop floor – just me and the welders.
As the summer went on, I began to develop friendships with the guys on the shop floor. They were very helpful as I moved from station to station writing all types of manuals on everything from doors to roll bars to tractor cabs. One thing I learned and was told throughout each manual I wrote was to look away from the actual weld that was taking place when I didn’t have a weld helmet on. If a person looked directly at the weld arch without a helmet, it would burn his or her eyes. Now if you’re like me, when someone says ‘don’t look’ or you ‘can’t look at something unless’ – I tend to want to find out what the “unless” part is and take a look.
Toward the middle of the summer the welders found an unused weld helmet for me and brought it to my current work station. I remember it was just before lunch time when I grabbed the helmet, placed the weld shield in front of my eyes and got to see someone weld for the first time. It was beautiful! Never before had a seen this thing that I had been writing about for months. I began to realize that this whole thing called welding was less of a formulaic process, and more of an art. It was a whole new experience and I remember thinking that I felt better finally learning about what the welders looked at throughout their day. It was like they had a secret and finally I got to see it for myself.
The noon whistle shouted and everyone began to prepare for lunch. I quickly walked through the entire factory, greeting everyone I passed (as good Christians do, or so was my thought) and made it back to the office where I could sit in the air conditioning and eat my lean cuisine. That day was a great day, I remember thinking. My manual writing was going well, I got along with the welders, finally loved my job, and saw my first weld. The water trickled on my hands as I finished washing up to prepare my food when I looked up in the mirror. On my forehead was a huge, black oil streak – no doubt given to me by the new weld helmet. “Now,” I thought to myself “I’m really becoming a welder.”
Sometimes I think our spiritual life is like my experience in the welding factory. (That may be a stretch, but keep tracking with me.) We can be around spiritual activity, even to the point where we could write manuals on it. We know the step by step process. We can watch and see the people getting really close to the hot flame of the Spirit and almost think we can get what they have just by being close to them. What I’ve come to learn is that even though being around spiritual people may help push me closer to the Lord, I am the only one that is responsible for how close I get to the flame of the Spirit. I am the only one that can place a helmet on my own head, (get to an intimate, secret place with Him), and determine to gaze as long as I can at the flame of the Holy Spirit. Just like in the factory, someone gave me a helmet, but I was the only one who could choose to put it on and look at the weld arch. Someone can tell you about intimacy with Jesus, about times away with the Lord, but it is up to you to choose to take a look at that unseen thing for yourself.
Here’s the thing: the promise is that once you put the helmet on, you will be changed. Once you begin to meet with the King of Kings you will become marked, just as I did when I realized oil was on my forehead from the welder’s helmet. As you spend time looking at the flame of the Spirit, I promise you that God will begin to anoint you, to woo you, to draw you in a greater measure. He will lead you and speak tenderly to you, just as he did to the woman in Hosea. It’s how he works. You go into his presence and you leave marked, anointed, and filled-up. And one thing you’ll find is that just like welding, meeting with the Lord is less of a formula and more of an “art.” Meeting with Jesus is falling in love over and over and over.
So my challenge today is to do whatever you can to put that helmet on – get to the secret place where you see the Lord – and gaze upon Him, the unseen King.
Be so blessed today. You are loved and highly favored.
