You’ve seen the bumper sticker–”Discouragement Happens.”

Or something like that. Well, anyway, it does. If you’re trapped in a hateful job situation or in unemployment, it’s going to happen. Don’t kid yourself. Be prepared and forearmed for that patch of bumpy road.

Maybe you wake up one morning and your mojo has called in sick. You really want to get your groove back, but it’s left no forwarding address. You know there are some things you need to be doing, but somehow right now eating dirt seems a more attractive option.

Say you need to call a certain individual about a job opportunity, but you’re frozen. It’s a problem sometimes referred to as the “100-pound telephone” and the “20-pound tongue.” Right now, it’s just not going to happen.

Or say you’re a wounded healer who operates a Web site to help other jobless folks–who don’t visit your site and don’t buy your book. It’s very hard to fill another person’s cup when your own has gone bone dry. You hit the wall. (Has it really been two weeks since my last post?)

There can be a variety of triggers. There’s the cumulative stress and fatigue of long-term unemployment, for one. Several years ago I experienced a catastrophic energy drain in West Africa, where after just a few days the heat and humidity reduced me to a zombie-like state of total torpor. It was almost too much effort to move, despite the work that needed to be done.

Or it might be an acute situation–like the sudden realization that the reason job opportunities keep slipping through your fingers at the interview stage has far less to do with your interviewing skills than it does the fact that you’re an Older Worker. The blood in your gut turns to ice with the realization that at your age that layoff was the Kiss of Death. There may not be another chance.

OK. This is, yes, semi-autobiographical. If you’re walking a valley like that now, I’m right there with you. The question is what do we do with it? Of course, we trust God for His provision. That goes without saying.

But after nearly a year and half of that, I am reaching the stage of enervation and discouragement. That’s just being honest and realistic. I don’t want to reach the point psychologically that I experienced physiologically in West Africa. By then it’s too late.

Here’s what I’m considering: Naming names. I have alluded to the age discrimination I experienced at the hands of my last employer, but I have not named them. I have alluded to age discrimination on the part of prospective employers who lose interest in me after I show up for the interview with gray hair. But I have not named them.

This may change. My wife disagrees. She says that’s too much negative energy, too little faith. I’m not so sure. Because there’s another factor: It’s called right and wrong. What’s going on too many times in America right now with older Americans is just plain wrong. And to remain silent about it would also be wrong.

What do you think?

OK. I’ll go first. My name is Steve, and I have a problem.

I’ve become dependent on government assistance. I just found out that my unemployment compensation, which I had expected to run out next month, is now extended into September. Four more months to become even more deeply ensnared in Acquired Helpless Syndrome, which some people (like conservative talk radio hosts) believe is a virtual conspiracy to create a permanent socialist-minded under-class.

I even had a brother lean across the table at lunch recently and tell me, “I think socialized medicine is a good thing.” I nearly choked on my chimichanga. In context, he might as well have told me that medical marijuana and man-boy love relations were a good thing. It was that shocking.

Now I fear absorption into something where resistance is futile, like so many other things. My loving family has become so concerned about my litany of complaints –”frustration failure & defeat”–that they conducted a mini-intervention on Easter, right after Sunday dinner. Talk about taking advantage of a fellow’s weakness. But I did have to admit that I might be setting myself up for self-fulfilling (negative) prophecies.

Good Friday was also memorable. Our church’s service involved foot washing. When it was my turn, my wife joked that she hoped I didn’t have holes in my socks. I said, “No, just in my shoes.” I stuck my finger though a hole, and people laughed. Let’s just say they looked like Crocs, but weren’t supposed to.

Three days later, one of the guys took me over to Kohl’s and bought me two pairs of shoes. He didn’t think the associate pastor should be walking around with holes in his shoes. When the church reaches out like that, it just gives you a good feeling about things–the way it ought to be, brother helping brother (instead of Big Brother managing our lives).

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: When we complain about big government, we’re really pointing a finger at all of us in the church. If the public sector is doing too much, it’s in large measure because the private sector is doing far too little. Shame on us. Let’s fix that.

I’ll definitely have more to say on this subject in the days ahead.

“How many times are they going to keep saying that?” I heard myself mutter this morning after being told for the umpteenth time that economic recovery was just around the corner. Again.

The fact that these assurances are coming from the same partisans who just a year or two ago were talking down the economy when a different party was in power makes me more than a little suspicious. It seems like we’ve been turning that proverbial corner for over a year now, and all that we find is another corner.

If the numbers mean anything, this vaunted recovery could still be a year or two away–if then. Let’s look at some real numbers:

The good folks at CalculatedRisk have gone to the trouble of putting unemployment numbers from the current as well as prior recessions into a graphic format, where they’re not just intelligible; they’re downright dramatic.

This graph shows the typical inverted bell curve of downturn and recovery from 11 different recessions. What jumps out, of course, is how much deeper is the current Great Recession in terms of employment.

You can also see that the deeper the downturn, usually the longer the recovery. Not always–the 2001 recession being one exception–but the trend is there. Not to mention that it also just kind of stands to reason.

Now, when those recessions are aligned at their nadir–i.e., where they bottom out–another trend appears. This bottom is roughly the halfway mark of the cycle, which is the reason I called it an inverted bell curve.

The implications? When the day comes that we can finish drawing the other half of our current cycle on the graph, it looks like we’re going to be 20 to 24 months farther down the road. Oh sure, other parts of the economy may get there faster. But remember, employment is a lagging indicator. You don’t get eggs before you get the chicken, as Dan Rather might say.

But there’s a catch: These are only trends–pretty impressive and remarkable trends. But there’s really nothing to say this cycle has to follow the traditional course.

Say Congress spends hundreds of billions of dollars to jump start the economy and save or create millions of new jobs. Oh, wait. They already did that.

OK, say 10 percent unemployment becomes the New Normal. Then what happens? The red line stays right where it is.

If you’ve been to Back to Work more than once or twice, you may already know that’s where my money is. I’m a bear and a believer in the New Normal. I believe much of the massive job loss we’ve experienced–including my own–may not be so temporary after all.

And I hope and pray I’m wrong. Meanwhile, we need to be preparing for the possibility I’m not.

If you don’t find a decent job in the next 18 months to two years, do you have a Plan B? If not, I strongly recommend you get one. And come back to Back to Work. Plans Bs Are Us.

I’d like to introduce my friends here to a couple of great resources that I think you’ll like. Both are highly recommended for people of faith who like to think. (May your tribe increase.)

The first is Active Christian Media. I commend it here not just because Stacy Harp is my friend, though she is. We became friends through our mutual interest in blogging. Nor is it just because yours truly is featured there right now, though I am.

Most importantly, it’s a great 21st century new media resource designed around new books and podcasting. Stacy is a vivacious, slightly outside-the-box interviewer who manages to turn author interviews into a laid-back listening experience. You feel like you’re sitting in the author’s front room, sipping tea and chatting.

Wednesday I was the author, and Back to Work! was the book. It was a good conversation, running about 50 minutes. Go ahead, check out the podcast. The format allowed me to get a bit more personal than I’ve been able to do in more formal radio interviews. I enjoyed it.

The second resource has little to do with unemployment and the job search, but for this presumption of mine: The search for meaningful work is a subset of the search for meaning in life, which is at root a theological/spiritual issue.

And when it comes to such issues, I know of no person more thoughtful and articulate than Pastor Kjell Axel Johanson. Kjell (pronounced “Shell”) is the pastor of an Evangelical Free Church in Stockholm, Sweden. I’m so pleased that we’ve been able to re-connect through blogging.

I met him several years ago over lunch in downtown Stockholm at a place improbably called the World Trade Center near the train station. I was doing a story about the collision of preachers with Sweden’s ultra-liberal hate crimes laws. Some state church (Swedish Lutheran) pastors were rebelling at the requirement that they perform nuptials for same-sex couples.

I asked him for his personal take on all that, and he responded more positively than I expected. Swedes are noted for their thoughtfulness, and Kjell Axel rose to the occasion. He told me that in the long view these things could represent a positive development, that there probably needs to be a shake-out among churches willing to follow God despite the cost if there’s any hope of returning to first-century-type faith.

I am so glad he’s blogging. I think you’ll find his posts among the more deeply thought-provoking things around these days in a world of instant but shallow communication.