My daughter specifically requested I write a post about her since the boys and their boxes in the bathroom made headlines. I spent some time thinking about her and the variety of ways I could write about her: she is very curious and asks a lot of questions, she is very interested in other cultures and issues facing other cultures, she is very artistic and is constantly creating something. But in the end, I landed on her stubbornness as it relates to trimming her hair. It felt like the perfect analogy for when God had me scale back and scale down throughout my life.
Annie has long hair and she wants to keep it that way. If I take her in for a trim, she insists on having the very littlest bit cut off, which always satisfies my request for the hair trim, but never gets her hair to the fullest healthy ends that she could have. I try to tell her the more you trim your hair, the faster it grows, but with healthy ends, instead of continuous split ends that are snapping and making your hair scraggly at the ends.
Such is life, God has again and again told me to scale back and I just keep leaning in, “doing it all,” pushing down the anxiety. The question is how scraggly will I let life get before I take the healthy cut? Will I cut off more than I want in order to grow in a healthier way?
While there have been several iterations of my choosing the unlikely path as it relates to my career, probably the most significant decision came in 2019. From 2017-2018, God had used my hearing loss to send me into a school of trust where I literally had no control. I ended up with a cochlear implant in spring of 2018 which would recover my hearing for my right side in a miraculous way. My audiologist has told me multiple times that my hearing success is exceptional compared with average patients.
In fall of 2018, I would begin the Walking with Purpose Fearless and Free Bible study on Ephesians. Doing this study after what I had been through with my hearing, truly cracked open my heart and allowed me to see all the ways I was not trusting God in my life. I was afraid to not be in control I was afraid of abandonment; I was afraid to be rejected; I was afraid to disappoint others; I was afraid and always anticipating the worst case scenario. That is a hard way to live—with a constant expectation that you will be rejected, make someone unhappy, fail at your job, fail at parenting, fail as a spouse. I could go on and on. This study spoke so deeply God’s insane love for us. Depths we cannot even fathom. It spoke to me about an identity which I acted as if wasn’t important—child of God, chosen, destined, sealed by the Holy Spirit. But the most important thing it told me was that I should grow into Him in every way. Let Him be the head and you be the body. Participate in what He is directing in your life.
Wow! Yes, even as I type this, it is conjuring up emotion in me. God was giving me a clear, trust me, trust me. In Spring of 2019, I started to get the feeling that God was asking me for a major transition, to leave my job in fundraising for a Catholic apostolate. I worked from home, but he seemed to be tugging my heart to be more available to my family. It wasn’t making sense to me, but I was taking time to deeply pray over it. I happened to come across a job opportunity for a local Catholic, private school. I interviewed for the job and got an offer. Maybe this was what God was telling me needed to happen. I could be with them at the same place in this wonderfully Catholic community.
Simultaneously I was talking with my sister who was studying in Rome for the semester, and I had gotten on my heart that if I went to visit her that we should go to Poland. She had suggested that I come at the end of the semester, and that she too was getting the feeling in prayer to end her semester in Poland. We both had goosebumps! Little did we know that the end of the semester dates would just happen to put us in Krakow for Divine Mercy Sunday, very close to the Shrine of the Divine Mercy. It would also be five years since I had been in Rome for the canonization of John Paul II. It really felt like God was giving me all the signs—GREAT TRUST NEEDED AHEAD BUT LISTEN TO ME. He was making it super hard to ignore. However, I continued to hold onto my career a little longer.
After turning down the Catholic school offer and returning from my trip to Poland, I continued to pray for an answer about the feeling I could not shake as it related to my career. Things were scaling up at the apostolate and my stress levels were increasing which spilled over into home life…a shorter temper, a lack of attention, and just general exhaustion were becoming norms to my personality. Joe and the kids started expressing that they could see this, not just that I was feeling this internally. This flag really brought me to my knees, and that’s when God asked me to do the unthinkable. He asked me to give up my career. He asked me to let go of the one thing I felt really good at. The place I could generally always count on for praise. If I was failing elsewhere, the affirmations could be counted on at work.
Work was also a security blanket. After seeing friends and family of mine have marriages break apart and Joe and I having navigated a rough patch of marriage several years before, my job was a security blanket. A ticket to survive on my own if worse came to worse. Again, what a terrible way to live! The world would tell me I was being a realist, but God would tell me I was being a fake. I would talk about my total trust in God, and I was making back-up plans for my life in the event trusting God didn’t work out. My ends were splitting if you will—going back to my daughter’s haircutting phobia. God was showing me if I didn’t trust Him and scale back, I was just going to be living unhealthy and parts of my life were likely going to start breaking apart whether I wanted them to or not. It would become out of my control.
And so, I went to my husband, and I told him God was calling me to quit my job. My husband also thought I was crazy, similar to my controlling instinct, but we took time and broke out a budget and figured out that I could quit and we would be OK. I ended up giving my notice a few weeks later, and would stay on until the fall of 2019. It was the best decision I ever made. In March 2020, as everyone knows, COVID hit the US and my kids were home with me. If I had not left my job when I did, I would have reached that time completely depleted and in a career I wasn’t sure I was supposed to be doing, but rather did it because it was as easy way to bask in the glow of achievement and affirmation.
God did not disappoint when I trusted Him in big ways. I did return to work for a brief year from Fall of 2021-Fall of 2022, back to the same apostolate which I love dearly, but the rub returned and my husband this time was the one saying to me, I think you should quit your job. I prayed about it and again, God said yes, trust me, and so I did. The budget is tighter wit the price of everything higher; there are days where I am still trying to pinpoint exactly if I should be doing something more, but I keep the conversation with God going. Letting Him be the head and me be the body. I pray that I am doing what He intends for me to be doing in these important years of my family’s life. I pray that you too will listen for His voice. I know leaving a job is not always possible. And honestly, God might not be calling you to leave a job. He might be calling you to trust Him about taking a job you view as too big or too much. He will lead you. Talk to Him. Listen to what He is saying through scripture, through family and friends, through prayer and spiritual mentors. I was called to give up a traditional, professional career, and I am learning to be OK with that. Yes, still learning, the control freak in me, loves to question God all the time. I am grateful for God’s patience with me in those moments. The most important thing is listening to Him, trusting in how much He loves you, and rooting your identity in Him and nothing else.
“Rather, living the truth in love, we should grow in every way into him who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, with the proper functioning of each part, brings about the body’s growth and builds itself up in love.” Ephesians 4:15-16
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