Happy Dances

     Hurrahs and happy dances!!! I’m doing cartwheels in my head and shaking my booty. This song is gonna be on repeat for a while in this house:

     We have been on a journey; a long journey that began as far back as when we were dating. Our story is wrought with redemption. When I broke up with Mr. Man it broke his heart. I don’t think he ate for a month and he dropped several pant sizes. That is another story but one of the things he felt God was speaking to him at that point was that he needed to start thinking about being a good provider. When we got back together after much repenting and dealings from the Lord between both of us, he told me his heart’s desire to be a Machinist. There is just such a company that sits right by my place of employment. As he visited me for lunch one day he drove by it and blurted out, “God, if I could work anywhere, I want to work there!” He then started the process of career hunting, calling colleges and what not. I don’t even know how it happened but someone overheard him talking about what he wanted to do in one of these career hunting places and asked him if he had heard about Work Source Oregon. Through a chain of events he ended up getting discounted classes, all his books and any other tools he would need all bought and paid for. This included a $300 dollar welding hood…for free. He started taking the beginning classes for machining. One of the days in class a representative from the company right next door to mine came in to speak to the class. He mentioned that there was a job opening and Wubby’s teacher knew he was looking for another job in the machining industry. He had a stack of applications in his car because he was desperately trying to find work, putting two to three applications in a day. It even got to the point where he was trying to sell knives through one of those pyramid scheme things. All of our friends laugh about that season of our lives because they know how funny it was for Mr. Man to be doing that kind of work. He hated every minute of it. I honored him because I could see he was trying his hardest. He ran from class to his car and got an application then got an on the spot interview in the parking lot of the college. Three months after he said in passing to the heavens where he wanted to work, he was working there. I can tell you it built our faith in leaps and bounds. We kind of had our eyebrows up over our head in shock in awe that God would orchestrate things to answer the desire of Wubby’s heart. It just gave us a bold sense that God was with us and His hand was on us for good even when things got hard.

     Then we got married. Wubs realized that he really wasn’t happy with machining. That he liked the idea of it but realized the money was in the programming of the CNC machines and his job at that company was just pushing buttons and loading big metal pieces in to these multi-million dollar machines to have them come out as air-plane doors or parts. All he knew was how to press stop and go and that made him really uneasy when he was left unsupervised on a night shift. One wrong press of a button and you could send a drill into something and cost the company thousands. I’m not even sure how he found out about the Metal Trades Union but somehow he ended up with a guy’s number that could open the door to the world of Union membership for him. He called this man every day for three months except on Sundays. “Hey, I’m just wondering if there is anything open for me yet?” It got to the point where the guy would just hang up on him. I was a little unsure of his game plan.

Me: “Are you sure you’re not bugging the crap out of him.”

Wubs: “No. This is his job. He’s supposed to help me.”

     Finally the guy called him and told him to meet him at a restaurant down near Sauvie’s Island. He sat down with him and the first thing out of the guy’s mouth was, “You’re a persistent SOB.” Language is always plenty colorful in Union world. By the end of the conversation he was given a Metal Trades Card based on previous years of installing septic systems around Oregon. Wubby already knew his way around pipe but he was so nervous that first day they sent him to the ship-yards. “I don’t know what they’re gonna have me do. I have the card that says I know what I’m doing but what if I can’t do it?” He thrived and fell absolutely in love with the inner pipe working of the ships. By the time he was done he had replaced much of the major piping on some big name ships including a NOAA boat and the Essayons. I think those links give you an idea of the types of ships he was repairing but I’m not sure if they are the exact boats he worked on or not.

     Then he started getting restless and was concerned that the paycheck for a Metal Trades Journeyman wasn’t going to be enough to keep us afloat if I wanted to be a stay at home mom. He started pounding on doors again. He actually tried two years previous to our marriage to get into the steam fitters apprenticeship but didn’t make it. The applications are only accepted once every two years and most of the time you have to know somebody who knows somebody…Wubs was called before a panel of five union higher-ups and asked a series of questions. One of the guys doing the interviews was a man who had watched Wubs come to the hall Saturday after Saturday on his own time and perfect his welding techniques...now that I think about it this was five years ago that he was working toward passing the weld test he just passed last week. Wubs and this teacher formed a great relationship and often this man would take Wubby's arms in his own to show him some new welding technique. You get pretty close with your teacher in those type if situations. During the interview for a place in the apprenticeship program this guy was telling him the answers as they were asked. It was laughable the favor Wubby had in that room all because he took a little extra time when no-one was watching to be excellent at what he wanted to do. To give you an idea of how competitive it is to get into this apprenticeship program, over 2,000 people apply and only about 150 to 200 make it in. That was this interview. A month or two later we got a letter in the mail saying he was number 85 on the list. He had gotten in. Our jaws were on the floor again. It meant that he had to give his journeyman Metal Trade’s card up and take a major pay cut at first but he was in and on his way. I was getting used to the life of a union worker. They generally work until a job is done, get laid off and put back on a wait list at the hall for available jobs. He never knew the job he would work next and he started looking and making known to the hall that he wanted a job that he could stay in. Apparently those jobs are rare for steam fitters. Would you believe that after a year he got exactly what he wanted, prayed and asked God for again? That is when he was placed with the company he has been at for two years now (a year into his five year apprenticeship program). He was laid off about six months or so into his time there and he was so sad and disappointed. It was one of those “the most recent person hired gets let go first when the office starts crunching numbers” things. His foreman, when they found out what happened, fought for them to bring him back saying that other people that were poorer workers should have been let go. One of them actually threw their company keys at the person responsible and said if you don’t hire him back then I’m leaving. He was back to work there in the next couple of weeks. That whole ordeal was really hard for Wubs as you can imagine. I’m amazed at how much his co-workers fought for him and think that says a whole lot about Wubs.

     So after all that…I’m doing a happy dance today. The same person that laid him off two years ago called him to day and left a message.

     “Can you call me when you get a moment? I have some good news for you.”

     He called and was told they were giving him a company van and they were giving him a tablet. This created waves with the co-workers. He’s the first person there to get a tablet. Even his foreman doesn’t have one yet! He was laughing describing what happened to me. "I’m the apprentice who’s getting his very own van, his very own tablet and his very own journeyman.” If you know anything about union hierarchy you know that journeyman don’t work under apprentices…LOL!! Technically they are working together not one above the other but I let him have his moment in the sun. The journeymen they are putting him with is a new hire so they debated over whether or not to give the van to the journeyman or the employee that had been with the company longer. They voted on who to give it to too. Wubby won. The company decided to do that because, another happy thing they have let Wubby know is... they are looking at him to start running jobs... which will most likely mean if he's good at it (which he will be 'cause he's good with people) that he won’t have to wait another five years when he turns out as a journeyman to become a foreman. If this all works out he will hopefully be a foreman as soon as he turns out!! Wubby said that the call ended with her telling him, “You’ve earned it.” I asked him if he cried because I knew how out of everything that could have happened today those three words meant the most to him. That someone had seen everything he was doing in secret and now he was being rewarded openly.

     It wasn’t the person on the other end of the phone (Matt. 6:18).