I didn’t post this yesterday, because I didn’t want anyone to think it was an April Fools joke. I quit my job. You know, the one I actually get a regular paycheck from.
Suddenly, I knew, with every fiber of my being, that I was done. I wrote a resignation letter giving two weeks notice, and turned it in the next day. After three months of agonizing deliberation, it was done and over. April 13th is my last day.
I won’t go into detail, but a situation at work allowed me to realize that this job is not in anyway going to take me in the direction I want to go in life. I honestly don’t know what direction that is, but I am absolutely certain that it wasn’t the direction I was going – nowhere. Or backwards.
Stuck. That’s what I told Brian, through many tears. I feel stuck in life, stuck because I don’t know what sort of job I want. Do I really want to work from home and own my own business? Because sometimes I think it would be nice to actually go to work every day and know what’s expected of me. On the other hand, sometimes working in an also office also sounds like being stuck, just with nicer clothes and more money.
Finally it came down to this. The honest, ugly, painful truth:
I want a job so that I can point to what I accomplish and say “See, I did this. Therefore, my life has meaning, purpose and value.”
I want to be defined by my work. I want to be above criticism and quips about selling myself short and wasting my four year degree and magna cum laude. I want my work to give me value.
And yet, I know better. I know that it never will. Even if I landed a job like some of the fourteen jobs I applied to last week, it would never fill the void.
But even ministry is tainted. When I serve, if the desire to help people is really wanting to give my life value, it’s all about me. Not God, not others.
So before I pour myself into finding a job or ministry, I have to find my meaning, purpose, and value. I think the first step is to stop thinking about myself so much. Stop fearing what other’s think of me, stop agonizing over what my life’s purpose is and what I’m supposed to be doing. Just stop it.
Instead, I need to put my brief life in perspective of God’s cosmic plan and vast greatness. And then in awe of His greatness, and then overwhelmed that He has chosen me, I simply say, “God, use me today. Let your love and grace shine through me today to a world that desperately needs it.”
And that will be enough, because if I am a vessel for God, then I will be also be filled.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
