God Is My Supply

As I look back on the aftershock of walking out on a consulting job after an attempt to coerce me (or better still extort me) into signing an unreasonable non-compete agreement, I must confess that as a Christian I am regretful that a relationship had to end on such an ugly note.

BUT as tempted as I am, I am taking the high road in not mentioning the particular company, individual or industry involved.

Some people essentially have asked me if something could have been worked out. Well, my choice was to either sign the non-compete and get paid or NOT sign it and NOT get paid my compensation due, which by the way was nice to have but not a humongous amount of money. Some choice, huh? I suggested I might consider a non-disclosure, non-solicitation or mutual non-compete agreement and they looked at me like I was crazy. I think only an idiot would have signed the non-compete and clearly these underhanded people are not people with whom I want to be associated anyway.

I fully believe their intention was to get me to sign the non-compete so I could indeed get paid, then say you're outta here, and stick me with the non-compete. Shysters and moneychangers are the only way I can think of them.

What's probably more frustrating for me though is that I really wanted to go into the meeting calm, cool and collected. However, my frustration had been building up for at least six weeks because of this and some less than ethical things I had seen taking place, as well. In other words I went ballistic at the meeting!

I had begun to see a pattern of where the owner seemed to think that I was a volunteer working there, putting in precious hours with pay not commensurate with the time I was spending. $25 an hour is pretty decent for the type of work I was doing. But on a day when we had just one client and I magically found myself in the office for 5 hours, answering phone calls or doing paperwork that she didn't want to pay me extra for, then that $25 an hour became $5 an hour, just above minimum wage.

A retail friend suggested to me this person knew what they were doing when setting up that pay scale in the first place-- knowing that there would be extra hours involved beyond the main $25 an hour.

After I complained about the disappearing $25/ hour, the owner tried to "entice" me with compensation of 33.33% of service fees as long as I signed the non-compete. What service fees? I could never find a schedule in the office that had all the services listed in one place so essentially I had to do my own payroll. Not only that, this laughable agreement also said that because of the "substantial" commission, there would be certain marketing costs I would be asked to bear myself. Oh, like what? In typical fashion these "costs" were not defined. They just wanted me to sign the dotted line ... and fast! Oh, let me also mention that this business is not doing well financially, so the 33.33% commission is all predicated on clients actually coming in the door.

So needless to say I was seething at the meeting even though I had called on the Holy Spirit to allow me to "take dominion" over the meeting. I could barely see straight. My dander was up because I knew in advance I had no intention of signing the non-compete.

But you know what? Even though I was livid the Holy Spirit WAS indeed with me. God became a "sun and a shield" protecting me from falling into the trap of signing the non-compete JUST for the money so I could get paid. It would have been easy (well not really) to sign the agreement so I could simply collect my pay and know that the agreement would probably be held unenforceable anyway. But I didn't want to get into that battle.

So as angry as I was, the anger, as I look back on it now, probably was sheer determination not to be tempted by the owner's bogus offers. The Holy Spirit allowed me to be strong and steadfast when many people would have caved in.

You see, good, bad indifferent, I knew going into the meeting that GOD is my source of supply, not this horrible person. I also felt that if God truly wanted me to stay there, then I would have at least gotten my pay even without signing the non-compete. THEN, I would have calmed down. The truth of the matter is that I believe God wanted me out of there anyway and this was the perfect opportunity to leave and not think twice about it. This was NOT a case of going (and staying) in Niniveh.

God wants us to rely upon HIM, only him. And that's what I am doing.

My God shall supply all my needs according to his riches and his glory.