Over the past couple of years God has been prodding me with a terrifying challenge, “I DARE YOU TO MOVE.” Career wise, I had been in my comfort zone for the past 11 years. I thrived behind the pages of books. Fresh out of college I landed on my dream job in a specialty book store. Had it not been too stressful for my health I think I would not have left. My second wind came not long after when I became a consultant in the same industry. I couldn’t ask for a better job. It had everything I wanted. I was blessed with admirable superiors. It was like having your career placed on a silver platter.
Then I got married. I married a wonderful godly man. Not only that, months after our wedding, we had a baby! So in less than a year, we became a happy bunch! The changes were happening so fast that I never really had the time to process each transition we had. It was during this time when I started to feel a certain “tension” that I couldn’t explain, a certain discontent that I couldn’t pinpoint, and a certain longing that I couldn’t quantify.
Welcome to the fallout
Welcome to resistance
The tension is here
The tension is here
Between who you are
And who you could be
Between how it is
And how it should be
(Lyrics from Switchfoot’s “I dare you to move”)
Funny that those lyrics came from one of my favorite songs and one of my most loved movies, “A Walk to Remember,” which is incidentally the theme of our wedding! 🙂
Going back, I finally had the chance to verbalize this to my husband during our Valentine’s date this year. I told him that the desire to be a homemaker and a stay-at-home mom is getting stronger each day. My job then did not require me to go to work daily. I paced myself according to my health’s needs without compromising the work I needed to deliver. At first, I thought that it wasn’t so bad. However, the tension remained. It never abated. In fact, it even intensified. I told my husband that this desire to be a full-time homemaker is something that I never had when I was still single; probably because I didn’t need it back then.
It’s like God turned on a switch when I got married. It felt like He gave me permanent glass shoes—beautiful yet fragile. He gave me precious roles that I should fill and that doing otherwise will cause it to break. It was a realization that I was trying to ignore but was proving more difficult to do.
I knew what I wanted to be and where I wanted to be. But I didn’t have the courage to leave my comfort zone. For the longest time, my husband and I were not on the same page on this as well. I was always mulling on leaving while his stand was for me to stay. So I waited and waited until the day came when God gave me no other choice but to move. A re-organization happened within the company leaving me with limited options. After much prayer and consideration, my husband and I agreed for the first time that it’s time to close that chapter in my career and move on.
What amazed me the most about this decision was the peace it brought inside of me. I finally moved. I finally accepted God’s dare. And I was at peace. Despite the big drop in our finances, I knew that God would provide for us and carry us through. God confirmed that not long after when our neighbor told me that they were looking for a copywriter. The best part about it was that it was home-based! In less than a week I got a new job that fit everything I truly wanted and needed. My husband was also blessed with a couple of jobs! One was a continuation of his previous contract and the other one was from his previous employer but this time involving a different industry! God’s ways are truly higher than ours!
Isaiah 55:8-9
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Now that I am a homemaker and stay-at-home mom, who happens to work on the side, all the tension and discontent that kept nagging me the past two years has disappeared. Sure we had to make adjustments with our budget and move into my in-laws temporarily. But even these things were already orchestrated by God beforehand. My in-laws are currently on vacation in Canada for four months. This has given us time to get settled financially and force us to let go of our excess stuff through a successful garage sale. What a relief that was, too!
Sometimes God makes us go through big faith-shaking decisions so that we will learn to trust Him completely. When this happens, we need to believe that the God who led us will also be faithful to deliver us. We are still in a transition phase and soon we will move to a new place again. It’s an exciting yet tiring phase of moving and settling. Nonetheless, it’s also very much like being in the eye of the storm where everything is calm despite the strong winds and heavy rains around. I have learned that moving only makes sense when you follow someone who will lead you to a better place. No one else fits that bill than our Heavenly Father who knows exactly what is best for us. I know that our sovereign God is doing just that for our family. He is leading the way slowly but surely. And with an all-powerful, all-knowing, almighty God going before you, there is definitely no turning back. 🙂
Deuteronomy 31:8
Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the LORD will personally go ahead of you. He will be with you; he will neither fail you nor abandon you.
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