Two years ago, I started out on a journey to uncover
God’s purpose for my life. At the time,
I didn’t know that’s what I was doing, but in hindsight, which as they say is
20/20, I can look back on it now and pinpoint the dates and events that set the
wheels into motion.
I had begun to pray earnestly for God to give me some
direction and let me know what it was that I was supposed to be doing with my
life. I have always felt that I was
destined to do something significant with my life and that I had been given
many gifts and talents for that purpose.
It always seemed to me that my steps were being clearly orchestrated to
allow me to have a unique set of experiences to learn from just for that
purpose. I had that feeling since elementary age, but of course I had no idea
what that would mean exactly.
Well in January 2010, I received a phone call from the
Chair of the department where I was completing my graduate work. I was working on my Master’s in Counseling in
a program that was slated to take three full years to complete but ended up
taking me eight! By the time I got this
call, I had only one feat left to complete: my 600 hour internship. Yes that’s right- 600 hours.
I had been dodging and dreading this internship for five of the eight years I
had been in the program. These
internships weren’t paid and I couldn’t afford not to work. I had tried everything that I could figure to
try to get it done, and I even took extra classes I didn’t need to try to stall
to give myself more time. Eventually, I
just told God that I was giving it to him and it was up to him to work it out
so that I could finish.
So this particular morning, when I get the call, the
Chair tells me quite bluntly that I’d have to finish everything that semester
and graduate, or I’d have to start over from scratch. Apparently, the program was supposed to be
completed in no more than six years and she had no idea how I had slipped
through the cracks. So now I had four
months to complete 600 internship hours somewhere and try to figure out how to
keep at least half of my income.
I hung up with her and immediately went to talk with my
supervisor who wasn’t trying to help me out at all. I left his office in tears realizing that I
had a choice to make: a) quit my job to finish the degree I had fought long and
hard for and could literally see the finish line, or b) give up on finishing
and stay in a job that I hated but didn’t think I could afford to lose. I chose to quit my job and finish my
degree. That was the first time that I
can remember ever making a conscious decision to live by faith and not by a
plan.
This is a good time to interject a bit of vital
information. My entire life up to this
point revolved around plans. My life’s
purpose had been to plan. Not only did I
need a plan for EVERYTHING, I also needed a couple of back-up plans, just in
case the first one didn’t work out. And
plans had served me well. I had done
everything I was “supposed” to do exactly when and how I was “supposed” to do
it. But we all know what God thinks
about our plans- they are the happy little punch lines that keep his job of
orchestrating and directing our paths, truly the only plan that matters,
entertaining.
So I’d decided to live by faith and allow God to manage
things for a change. But just like most of us, that was actually just my Plan
A, not my Plan –Period. Of course I knew
that God knows and sees all, but I tend to take the verse “faith without works
is dead” a little too literally.
Things fell neatly into place and I started my internship
on a psychiatric unit, which by the way, was the LAST place on Earth that I’d ever think I would end up. I now see (again with the hindsight) that the
last place that you’d ever think to be is usually the best place for you. Needless to say, I LOVED every minute of
it.
Though my family was fine financially (for the most
part), I was panicking about not working and searched and applied for job
incessantly. I was obsessed with
it. My way of dealing with that stress
and the stress of a neglected marriage that was falling apart was to find ways
to plan more. Planning, you see, helps
me-all of us really- feel like I am in control.
I had a clear plan for finishing my internship, graduating, starting a
new job, finding a new house and more than likely, separating from my husband.
With all that done, there was only one thing left to plan…a party.
By mid-February, the planning for my daughter’s 2nd
birthday was in full swing. It was guaranteed to be one for the record
books-sure to cement in stone once and for all that I was the ultimate party
planning Mama. Not bragging, but it was
a great party- and I spared no expense to pull it off. After the party though, there was nothing
left to plan and the wheels in my head started to spin because I had no idea
what to do next. That was okay though- because God did. Ten days after the party, I ended up in the
hospital for eight days with pneumonia, strep throat and “flu-like”
symptoms. To this day, I still don’t see
how one person can have all of that at once.
I always have been and overachieverJ.
After completely traumatizing my kids and terrifying my
family with this episode, I was confined to my bed for close to three weeks. This was torture until I took a moment to
stop and think. God clearly let this
happen for a reason and I was convinced that he wasn’t going to let me get up
out of that bed until I figured out what it was he wanted me to see. I can say now without hesitation that the
person I was prior to March 30, 2010 (the day I passed out in my bathroom and
was carted out of my house on a stretcher by the Fire Department and EMTs) and
the person I am becoming in the days, weeks and months since are like night and
day. Something inside me shifted. But that shift didn’t happen until I was “stuck”
with nowhere to go and nothing to do but sit and listen to God.
My pastor says often that the most important part of
prayer is listening and that you need to be quiet long enough to hear what the
Spirit is telling you instead of spending all your time telling God what you
want and think you need. When I finally
did that, I realized that I had spent the last 29 years of my life running on a
wheel to nowhere, kind of like a hamster in a cage. I was so busy trying to hurry up and stay on
course with this plan that I had created, with no real end in sight, instead of
finding out what the correct route and destination for me was from Him.
I knew that my life had to change and that I truly had to
let God captain my ship- I really wasn’t as good at it as I thought. William
Ernest Henley’s Invictus says, “I am the master of my fate/I am the captain
of my soul”, but for the Christian, that’s supposed to be God’s job. When
we try to do it, it usually gets botched up pretty quickly.
Well, for the next several months, things were
great. My marriage was great, I was
spending quality time with my kids, I was spending more time working the small
business that I had been keeping as a side gig, and I was experiencing an
indescribable peace. It was the peace
that you get when you truly depend on God and don’t worry about anything. It’s not always an easy thing to do, but we
did it and it was really great. I also
started to pray more and really read the Bible for myself and not just take
someone else’s word for what it said and what it meant.
Although my father was a preacher, it was/is
amazing to me just how little I knew about the Word of God. And it was during this time that it was first
laid on my heart to share my journey and experiences with others; particularly
Christian women who were on the same journey of discovery as me, trying to get
to God’s purpose for their life and to walk it out fully.
At first the idea sounded kind of cool and I shared it
with some of my friends, and they too thought it sounded like a good idea. But
the more I thought about it, the more reluctant I became. I was afraid of what people would think. Why would anyone want to read anything I had
to say, anyway? Because I was afraid, I
convinced myself that it was probably just an idea that I came up with,
definitely not something I had been led to do.
I clearly wouldn’t be so scared if it was divinely purposed, right?
Okay, time for another hindsight moment: looking back, I
now realize that more often than not, the things that are divinely purposed
make no sense (to you) AND
scare the crap out of you. As my
unofficial guru Iyanla Vanzant says, “If
you are not living your life to the point that pee is running down your leg,
you are living too small.” So, talking
myself out of following that tugging in my heart was the beginning of a series
of events that snowballed and could have potentially destroyed everything God
was trying to do in my life before it actually got started.
Fast forward to November 2010- I finally get hired at the
hospital where I interned as a PRN (as needed) employee. The job was a blessing (financially) and I
got to do the work I loved. I am a
counselor and teacher by nature; always have been since I was a kid. But the more I worked, the more glimpses of
the old me began to appear. I started to
focus more and more on working to make money.
The more I took my focus off God and put it on things, the more things
fell apart. My marriage began to crumble
again, every car we owned died, and our house went into foreclosure. But none of that happened until after I started working like
crazy and lost focus. During the
summer while I was unemployed but totally and happily dependent on God things
were great. I get a job making more money per hour that I ever had and things
fall apart. You would think it would be the other way around, huh?
By August 2011 we end up filing for bankruptcy to keep
our house and I enter the worse depression of my life; second only to my ‘Black
Period’ after my father died. Now during
this depression, I can’t/don’t pray, I have lost all my faith, I stop reading
God’s word, and I become completely lost and don’t know what to do to fix any
of it. There were even days when I felt
like I was mentally and physically incapable of walking inside the church. I would stay at home while my family went
without me. I got so caught up in trying to come up with a plan to make things
better that I completely forgot to take time to acknowledge just how much God was
taking care of me and my family in spite of the storm. I didn’t actually realize it until much
later. Again…hindsight.
I became completely desperate for a full-time job and a
“regular” routine. All the living on faith
was getting to me (probably because I’d lost my faith). So, finally decide to start praying again,
but this time it’s for a new, fulltime job. Doing
anything. And come November, I
finally get one.
I spent the next six months doing absolutely
nothing. Literally. I sat in an office and was paid, but was
NEVER given anything to do. For a woman like me, that was torture. I don’t do well sitting and being idle
(unless I’m at home and that is what I
choose to doJ). Fortunately, God has a lot of patience. After kicking and screaming and trying to
make my employers see my worth and give me a different position (something they
had absolutely no interest in even considering) I was forced to sit in a quiet
room alone and listen. Sound
familiar? Vaguely reminiscent of my
post-pneumonia lie-in, huh?
Well, I started to pray, a lot, and read the Bible a
lot. And you know what I realized? I realized that I allowed myself to get
completely off track. I had been in the
perfect place to learn and grow into my purpose as a human being, to grow in my
faith, but I blew it out of fear. But God
is patient enough to wait out our human nature, to let us get back to a point
where we can really hear him. And this
time, he used others to help me get the message. Everywhere I turned, somebody was talking
about finding purpose and passion in your life.
I spent my workday watching Oprah’s Life Classes online. My pastor started preaching a series of
sermons on gifts and purpose. My
favorite internet pastor Dr. David Cooper started preaching about it as
well. Even Tyler Perry started sending
out emails to his list serve about it! (I promise sometimes I think those
emails are just for me) Coincidence? I think not.
I started to dig deep and get really real with myself
about who I was and what my passions were.
Bishop T.D. Jakes said that your passion would lead you to your purpose,
and I desperately needed to figure out what my passions were. I had spent so much time doing what I, or
someone else, believed I should be doing that didn’t think I had real passion
for anything. After lots of prayer and soul searching, I finally uncovered what
they were. They had always been inside of me, aching to become active parts of
my life, but I’d suppressed and shrouded them in fear. For whatever reason, I had willingly kept
myself from the road that would lead me to my true purpose because I couldn’t
control it and it would require a level of faith that I clearly didn’t think I
had.
But of course that wasn’t the end of it. God still had to get me back to where he
wanted me to be in the first place; in a place where I was totally focused on him
and completely dependent upon him. So, another series of ‘unexpected’ events
led me to resign from my job and I am now back in the place I was two years ago
(hopefully a little wiser and a little better prepared to embrace my destiny).
Almost immediately after leaving my job, the pressure to
share my experiences with others became undeniable. I couldn’t ignore it if I tried. And again- the mere thought of it terrified
me. But if I have learned anything in
the past two years, it’s that I want to learn the lessons the first time and
move on; I don’t want to have to keep repeating the same scenario because I
didn’t pay attention the first go-around.
