2021
My spiritual director, sitting with me in our usual meeting place of over a decade, declares with confidence, “You really hear from God! When I make reference to you, I tell my husband, she really hears from God.” This was news to me. I never thought of it this way. As far as I knew I was just minding my own business in my faith life. I had never claimed to anyone that I heard from God. God made things clear to me as circumstances lined up, as I looked at how things had worked out in the past, or in my gut. I never heard a voice that I connected to God’s. How interesting that this was my descriptor–the one who hears from God.
This was a little external reinforcement to look back upon for the road that I would soon begin to travel.
Days later, I found myself in the midst of a profound supernatural experience that brought me to tears. I had never experienced anything like it. I was wrestling in mental frustration about a particular circumstance when, out the blue, God began to show me how he saw me by providing clarity to a longtime question which was related to my struggle.
What exactly is the thing that I have been made to do, no matter the job or the season of life? It came through crystal clear. I sensed it all over my body along with God’s presence as I was driving down the road. It took me by surprise and was so powerful that after I pulled into the garage and parked the car, still weeping, I walked into the house and wrote it all down. I was very clear on what was happening and I knew I would not be the same.
Like Moses and Mary, while minding my own business, carrying on with my daily life, an encounter changed my life without warning.
From there, I began to grow in new and deeper ways in my relationship with the Lord. I also began to know my time in my current career was ending because what I was made to do and the current reality of my job was no longer in alignment. This visitation was the beginning of a redirection.
In the process of redirection, at times it feels like I have the faith to walk on water. Other times, it feels like I am sinking.
2022
12 months later, I am sitting in a room at church where a meeting has just wrapped up when my Facebook messenger makes the distinct noise of an incoming message. “Hi Lisa, I promise this is not spam, but have you ever thought about a career change?” How curious! “Why, yes. Funny you should ask,” I answered the friend on the other end. “I am thinking of leaving my 20-year career. Why?” What followed was an incredible opportunity that I should have/would have jumped at if I did not have so much specific clarity on what God had called me to. Nonetheless, it was exciting, tempting, and flattering.
The next day I got on a plane for London for a work trip. This new job option would be a nice pay bump. It would open doors to a new world. And, it would be local, an important component to my sense of redirection. But, it would not check the main box. That entire night as I was bouncing my head forward and backward, sleeping and waking, in my economy seat, I would hear over and over again, “Church, not non-profit management. Church. Not non-profit management.” It was persistent and clear. Take the opportunity as a sign of good things to come, but do not take the bait, I decided.
I would stay the course and wait.
Six weeks later, urgency was growing in me. The end of the calendar year was drawing near, but no opportunity to follow my new sense of call had materialized. I told God early in our conversations about new beginnings that I could by no means afford to lose my salary or go backwards in progress after all the early years of ministry penny pinching and struggling to advance as a woman, so I was sure that God would honor my bargain and there would be no gap from one job to the next.
Eventually, I had to pay attention to the pounding sound in my chest. It was sounding an alarm of release from my job. It was not that I did not like my job. I had felt excited and called to that job. In so many ways it was the best job ever. But just as easily as God had given me a call to the position out of nowhere, I knew God had taken it away. God had been preparing me to go where God sent me. I did not know where I was going, but I was no longer sent there.
One night, as I lay in bed, I felt the Holy Spirit again. This time it was an urgent, clear, step-by-step plan. The instructions included exactly what date to leave my job, a volunteer ministry assignment to step into, and a financial plan to cover our family for two months after my last day of employment. I sent the appropriate emails to enact the plan and went to bed with peace.
Since God led me step-by-step and I followed all of them, I naturally expected there would be more instructions by the time the plan ended. The last thing I expected was a gap, let alone a long gap.
2023
Early in the year, I worked one final month in my career, completed my volunteer assignments, and then came to the end of the lit path of instructions. It was difficult. What lay beyond was darkness. It was terrifying. In the beginning, every calendar day was excruciating. One day out in the wilderness…two days out in the wilderness…
Over 400 days out in the wilderness…
At this point, I have learned to walk with a very tiny headlamp on a very dark path, sometimes making no steps of progress on the path, and often taking the tiniest step imaginable. I cannot see far enough out to take any huge steps. Every day is an act of trust and obedience.
[To be continued…]
