The Day the Toast Landed

It was the kind of thing that shouldn't really happen. I stood open-mouthed by the kitchen counter, knife in hand with a look of bewilderment. The toast had landed perfectly on its edge, neither buttered-side up nor down. So much for Murphy's law then, I thought. I should have known really, that it would be an unusual kind of day.

This was last Tuesday. My colleague, Peter, was intrigued by the miracle toast, and suggested I ought to have preserved it for posterity. I almost felt ashamed for eating it. Almost. It was my breakfast after all. For reasons I haven't figured out, he then went on to tell me his theory about how cats can survive a fall from 200 storeys, but probably not from the 9th floor, and joked about strapping buttered toast to a cat and watching it spin in mid-air as if to prove that cats 'always land on their feet' and toast always falls butter-side down.

An unusual kind of day. For most of the morning, I sat at my desk trying to concentrate on writing a troubleshooting section for the Hierarchy Manager guide. The Hierarchy Manager guide is an extremely boring document about something overly complicated. I sweltered into the afternoon.

"Matt, will you be around later?" asked James, my boss, appearing from nowhere.

"Er, yep," I said.

"I need a word with you. Around half four? I've just got to pop out for an hour, so..."

"Um... OK."

I looked at Peter. Peter looked at me, eyes wide with understanding. And the Hierarchy Manager guide was swimming around on the screen. It was most definitely time to pray.

-

"Ready?" asked James.

"Yup," I said, gulping. I span out of my chair and followed him into the meeting room.

And then, quite unexpectedly, two odd things happened.:

The first was that a scripture went ping inside my head... yeah, like a lightbulb. And I heard the words go round in my head: "...and the peace of God that transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus" (which I now know is Philippians 4:7).

And then the second, was a feeling of completely inappropriate contentment. It made no sense. It was that feeling of sinking your toes into warm sand, or slipping silently into a warm bath. And it was so out of place it made me laugh as I closed the door of the meeting room behind me. It clicked shut.

"I've asked Claire to come in, as this will be a... well a difficult conversation," said James. His face was red and he appeared quite sheepish. It reminded me of my interview. Same chair, same room, same air-con buzzing away. I smiled as I sat down. God is awesome, I thought. God is awesome...

-

So. I have been sacked.

But it's actually OK. It actually is OK. I didn't do anything dreadful by the way - I just wasn't really right for the job. And somehow the peace of God was more than I needed to cope with the humiliation of being told that I wasn't good enough. And so, it was actually alright. Sometimes things don't work out the way we expect.

Although, I think the next time the toast lands side-on, I might just stay in bed.