I don’t quite know how to start this, but then again, when do I ever start things smoothly? I could write a novel on how many awkward beginnings I’ve had in life. I always seem to stumble into things like a person who has suddenly been shoved into a door of a room she’s never seen before.
This week, I am entering a room I haven’t seen before – a full-time, salaried job, where I’ll be a media creator at a private school. I’ll have a desk and benefits and free lunch, doing what I love, which still blows my mind.
Five years ago, in July of 2017, my full-time graphic design job called me on a Friday and said, “Don’t come back Monday.” I wasn’t even allowed to come get my things, because I was hired through a temp agency. Some random dude had to sort through my desk, plop all my things in a box, and deliver it to me. I had just a signed a lease on a brand-new apartment, $815 a month. And I didn’t see a way out. I honestly thought God forgot about me.
One day not too long after losing my job, I was on my old, worn couch and I cried into the dingy pillows. I said in my heart, “I feel entirely invisible.” From 18 up until that point at 25, I had been going non-stop with my education and career, getting achievement after achievement, desperately wanting to just be important. Without doing “big” things, I didn’t feel important. All the As and going above and beyond in all my classes and being editor and winning awards, it felt like it had added up to a big zero.
Within that same week or so, I went to church and I went up to the altar. A girl that only knew my name at that point in time prayed for me and told me that she thought God wanted me to know that I wasn’t invisible; I was being hidden away for a purpose. I was floored – it was God responding directly to my couch cries.
Not long after, I found a verse in Hosea 2 and the Lord made it clear that it was a verse for the season I was in:
“I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. There, I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There, she will respond as in the days of her youth.”
Hosea 2:14-15
And so, I was in the wilderness. I worked a lot of jobs that weren’t even close to media. When people asked me what I did for a living, I didn’t really have an answer. I always had at least two jobs at once, sometimes three, or four. I did a lot of things I didn’t want to do but that I knew the Lord was asking me to do. I gave and gave and gave to others around me until it hurt.
I did that for 5 years. And God was right – he restored me to the days of my youth. I remembered why I love the things I love. I fell in love with video, which I hadn’t even touched much since I was a kid. I danced to songs in my car with the windows rolled down. I wrote songs on my apartment floor. I took joy in the small things, nice meals, time with friends, comedy shows, dancing alone in my kitchen. I also cried buckets of tears, screamed in my car, cursed a lot, and had months of losing hope. I made wrong decisions. I made right decisions. I overdrafted my bank account more times than I can even begin to count. I worshipped until my voice got hoarse and my body was covered in sweat. I gave a lot of myself, my time, my money (which was always tight), my efforts, my heart.
I saw that even if God never did another thing for me, he’s already done so much – given me life and gifts and most importantly, his presence. He was closer than a brother, the truest friend, my Lord and my savior. He whispered truths in the dead of night. I learned to love the wilderness just as much as I sometimes hated it. I became a person who could sit still, not have the validation of man, and still be whole.
The wall between me and my career stopped being something I pounded on, and I waited on the Lord to move. There was a truth to be found there, that I could only find in waiting. Some things you truly don’t learn until you’re still.
I learned that I can trust God and ask him for big things. I learned that faith is a thing that you dive fully into and it’s not something where part of your body can still be on the shore. I learned that even when circumstances are bad, there is always a greater truth. I learned that sometimes the call of God will look crazy to others, and that’s ok. I learned that God doesn’t need me; he just wants me. There’s a million other things I learned, which you can read in my book later. (Who knows how it’ll be published, that answer/way hasn’t manifested yet.)
And now, I’m on the other side – beginning a new job that I’m excited for.
One thing God has told me a lot is, “You are walking through this so you can own your money, time, career, and it won’t own you.” Meaning, I don’t live in fear of it and I don’t need it to be a beautiful, meaningful, important person. It’s an assignment, not a definition of who I am.
So, I’m starting on a new assignment, and I’m excited to see where God takes this one.
