When the Lord gave me the word warrior at the beginning of last year, a small part of me was excited, revved up to be a mighty warrior for the Lord. But most of me was a little nervous. Being a warrior usually means there are some battles ahead, but I tried not to think of that and pushed the thought out of my head. But honestly, I wasn’t really at all prepared for the battles that were fought last year, especially towards the beginning of the year. Many of them spiritually as well as physically.
I don’t want to go into too much detail, but I do feel like I am supposed to share some of this. None of us are perfect, and life can sometimes feel like a sledgehammer to the heart as well as the head sometimes.
The beginning of the new year was already showing a lot of trouble for me at my job at the time. There had been some expectations laid down that felt incredibly overbearing as well as a pile of little things that were making me feel uncared for and taken advantage of. Aside from that, I was feeling like it was getting close to time to be done there and move elsewhere. I had run out of momentum and felt stuck, with nowhere to move up or increase my skill set. I had already started looking for a job, brushed up my resume and started applying. I really wanted to get a job at a local hospital that is incredibly reputable and would have room and possible financial help if I wanted to pursue a medical career of some sort. Nursing was high on my list of things I was looking at, so it made perfect sense to start there. There were multiple opportunities that almost happened, then at the last moment, fell through.
During this process of looking, things kept getting worse at work and it got to the point where spiritually, I came to the conclusion that I didn’t feel all that safe at work. When I say that, I want to preface it with the fact that I wasn’t physically abused, or put in danger in any way physically. I had come to the point where I was living under a lot of fear and constantly concerned that I was going to get in trouble, or that something I was doing or wasn’t doing was going to be seen as wrong and I would get chastised. What cemented that matter in my head was the fact that I wasn’t the only person in my job position to feel that way. What furthermore didn’t make sense to my brain was the fact that I honestly gave my job my all. I worked very hard and looking back, probably tried too hard to please management and those around me. It had become an idol and a fear for me. This need to always be seen as perfect.
Honestly, there is so much here that I could and have unpacked to myself and to those around me that I trust, but for the sake of this post, I will leave it where it is. I think I made my point.
Around March, a job prospect looked incredibly promising and I debated hard about quitting. I felt so torn. I didn’t want to be a quitter and I had put up with so much and fought through many spiritual battles up until this point at my nearly two year stint at this job. I had overcome a lot and learned to work with some incredibly difficult people and situations. I didn’t want to fail my assignment, because I knew that God had me here for a purpose. Taking my fear of failing further, I didn’t want to fail God in case he had a specific mission for me here. After a hard discussion with my mom and a realization with God, I felt like, regardless of any outcome, it was time for me to leave. I was tired of fighting. I was exhausted from fighting through every single hour of every single work day, desperate to get home and take the load off.
I put in my two weeks, hopeful in the future and hopeful that the job opportunity that felt so absolutely perfect for me would come to fruition. Making it to the point of quitting was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I was a fearful, nervous mess before it happened. I didn’t say anything about the way I was feeling. I wanted to leave on as good of terms as possible and I wanted to be as gracious as possible throughout the situation. I just simply stated that I had an opportunity and that there wasn’t really any more room for me to grow in my current position. They took it better than I expected. I didn’t have high hopes for the meeting going well because the last two people to quit had not been handled well. Before my two weeks were up, the job opportunity at the hospital fell through and I was going into a period of time where I wouldn’t be working. I was grateful that I had an emergency fund saved up so that my small bills wouldn’t be neglected and that I would have enough to last me a few months if need be. My brother and sister-in-law graciously offered to pay me to babysit their youngest for a few days each week and I was so incredibly blessed to spend that time with my sweet niece.
I had a fair bit of time to acclimate, calm down after the storm of emotions and process the decision I had made. It was still very hard for me in many ways and I often fought thoughts and lies of failure as well as dealing with the repercussions of a lot of what my mind and body had endured in dealing with a lot of the issues from work. It wasn’t until a month or so later that I would realize the true extent of what these lies had done to me and my mind and spirit.
On a whim, I decided to contact a company I randomly knew about through one of my previous co-workers. Her husband worked there and she was always saying how well they treated him and what a great place to work it was. I saw that they had an opening for a receptionist and I called and left a message for one of the managers saying that I was interested in a job. It wasn’t but fifteen minutes later that he called me back, asked a few preliminary questions and set up an interview. My heart pounding in my chest and my adrenaline through the roof, I was excited and so nervous for my interview.
I ended up having two interviews in the same day. One was at the RV dealership that had called me back so incredibly fast, and another was at a dental office that was over 45 minutes of a commute.
The interview at the dealership went well to what I thought. They told me that they felt like a receptionist was a bit beneath my skills and that they had an opening for a finance assistant. I was interviewed by two of what would later become my bosses and I was struck by the way that they were genuinely interested in where my giftings and skills lay. I hadn’t had that experience before when it comes to a job and it was a bit of a wonder to me that someone would care enough to ask about those things. I realize now that it tends to be par for the course in most situations and interviews, but at the time, my only experience was with people who didn’t really care to utilize a lot of my skillset beyond the mundane chores and tasks they needed completed. They said they would let me know and I walked out and to my next interview, feeling like I liked this place.
On the flipside of that, the next interview was an absolute disaster from my standpoint and it wasn’t a place that I wanted to work in the slightest. It was so disorganized and they didn’t even have any interview questions at all. My phone had died that day (I know, so much going on) and I was using a hand me down with my old sim card, so needless to say, things weren’t working as well as they should. I didn’t know that the manager from the previous interview had left me a voicemail offering me the job until he called again the next day. I felt so bad that I hadn’t gotten the voicemail, and without really asking a lot of questions due to my excitement and nervousness, I got the job of finance assistant at an RV dealership.
Make sure you join me next week for Part 2 of my warrior journey through 2019.
Blessings,
