The Joy of Becoming

Fifteen months ago an unexpected acquisition caused me to leave the longest standing position of my professional life.  For months I had felt uncomfortable with work.  For weeks a friend had asked me what I was going to do about it. Was I applying for jobs? Was I going to quit?  What does uncomfortable mean exactly?  I had no answers. All I knew was that however one could come to explain my discomfort or uneasiness, it couldn’t be attributed to me being spiritually out of alignment.

I was still active in my prayer life, seeking daily to clearly hear the voice of God, and although constantly uncomfortable, the only time that I felt out of alignment was when I went to apply for a job. I just didn’t feel like applying for a job was what God wanted me to do.

So, I did the thing that is often most difficult for Christians – I remained still.  I promised God that I wouldn’t move unless He told me to, and He kept me in that season of uneasiness for about 3 months. Who would’ve guessed that a year later, I would be desperately praying for that lost season of discomfort.

I spent 11 of those 15 months unemployed; at least 7 of which without a single check coming in. I didn’t even qualify for unemployment.  At one point, I was very actively tracking and had applied for 67 jobs within ~ 6 weeks with NOT A SINGLE OFFER!  Here I was with 9 degrees, hadn’t been unemployed since I was 11 years old, and God wouldn’t give me a job no matter how much I begged him!

I have never felt so forgotten in my life.

I reached a point where I was crying in the shower nearly every time I turned the water on, pleading with God to tell me why He was so mad at me.  Asking God, how did I get here when I did everything that you told me to do?

I was in the valley, and I watered it daily.  Then, I decided to stop.  I decided that instead of crying over something that God wasn’t doing, that I would praise Him for everything that He was doing. I can honestly say that despite scripture, teaching and everything else, it was very hard to find things to be grateful for in the beginning. So, I started small - thank you Lord that even though I didn’t get a job offer today, at least I didn’t get a rejection! I thanked him for our home, for no car note, and being able to feed my daughter.  I got back to daily mediation and thanked Him for that, because it was not until then, that I realized what was happening.

I HAD FORGOTTEN.

You’ll notice that I speak a lot about process, and that’s because I feel like we don’t give process enough credit.  As people, we focus on the sunshine vs. the rain.  As Christians, we focus on the mountaintop vs. the valley. We forget that just as there is always a place, there is also a process.

When life hits us, we lean on common scriptures like Deuteronomy 31:8(NIV), “the Lord himself goes before you and be with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged”.  We quote these scriptures and people recite them to us in hopes of providing comfort, but those scriptures alone are not comforting.

When I stopped crying, I figured out that none of us lands on a mountaintop or in a valley.  There is a PROCESS attached to every PLACE. In order to get to the valley, you must descend from the mountaintop. In order to reach the mountaintop, you have to climb the mountain.

The discomfort that I felt before leaving my job was my descent. I was headed for a very necessary valley.  The valley within which I cried often, unsure how I would care for my daughter. We know that Matthew 6:26 says birds “do not store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them”, but when bills keep coming instead of checks, or you start to see the back of your refrigerator…. does that scripture feel real to you?

I know that we are taught that we reap what we sow, and that I had always tried to sow love, grace and good works.  Unfortunately, when you’re in the storm, you can’t see any of that, because this isn’t a movie, it’s real life, and climbing a mountain is hard!

I cried in my valley wondering how long the storm would last, not realizing that my tears added to the flood.  When I stopped watering it, I stopped sinking.  I realized that if God wouldn’t pull me out, that I was okay if He would just join me.  I couldn’t sit in that valley alone.  Instead of dwelling on how I got there, I invited God to get down in there with me.  My resume wasn’t helping me.  My degrees weren’t helping me.  The prayers of my family weren’t helping me.  I had to shift my focus.

Some of us need to learn to pray – ‘Lord, if you won’t deliver me, join me. Be with me where I am and show me the way out’. The Bible says that the Lord goes before us, but He cannot go before us unless we first invite Him to be with us. He can only lead us out, if we give Him our hand.

When I invited God to sit with me in my valley, He showed me that of those 67 jobs that I’d applied for in that 6 weeks, I was only actually interested in 11; and of that 11, at least 4 would have required so much of me that I would hardly ever see my daughter.  That’s why we need logic in the valley, why we need God and wisdom in the valley.  Why we need clear vision.   If you spend enough time crying in the valley, you’ll blur your vision enough to think that the nearest mountain is yours to climb.  I accepted 2 positions in that first year of unemployment and neither of them was my mountain.

90% of those jobs I’d applied for would’ve caused me more harm than good.  That’s why God wouldn’t give them to me.  I was in my valley. I recognized that, but I had to stop crying in order to see MY mountaintop.  I had to stop focusing on how unhappy I was, in order to get to the joy of becoming who I want to be.

Follow Me as I Follow God

@RevealingRuth