Weaving Dreams: The Joy of Work, The Love of Life

Chapter 28. Grace in the Trying: Finding Courage in Difficult Circumstances

Sitting in my office at night, I was alone save for the steady clicking of the keyboard and my cell phone lighting up with new text messages from my kids asking where I was. I could hear the low hum of a vacuum rising and falling with each push off in the distance. A bookshelf behind me housed a pictorial exhibit of my life on paper: smiles suspended, black-and-white and living color, edges wrinkled, torn, repaired.

I leaned back in my chair, spinning to look past the photos and out the window, and thought of my Dad, and then of our Basketmakers. In my mind I saw each face I had known since childhood, pieced together family trees in the forest of my imagination.

I went to school with his son; shared the bleachers at a football game with her daughter; introduced him to my own children.

The only bittersweet crumb of working in a company that feels like family is that it is family. It's personal. And unfortunately, the recession of those years sprinted through America like a rabid dog that could care less about family—or layoffs.

But I did. And I still do.

Raking tired fingers through my hair, I contemplated the inevitable and fought against the gathering tide of doubt, battling unseen warriors within myself. Could I figure out a way around this? I wondered. Maybe we could put it off for a few months—at least until after Christmas. . . . He just bought a new bass boat. Shoot. How are we going to tell him that we ...