Behind the scenes of the highlight reel

Some of you may have seen my Instagram post awhile back, announcing that I’ve started a Master’s of Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Liberty University. It’s funny how we post the highlights on social media for all to see, but don’t always share the full story behind the picture. This particular story starts with what I perceived as a failure. 

This past spring, I made the decision to step out of vocational ministry to focus on investing in my new primary ministry: my marriage. I got a simple job working a front desk, but within a few weeks realized it was not a healthy work environment. I began looking for other jobs and applied for a position at a missions agency. It was pretty much my dream job: I would have been coordinating the administrational logistics of short term missions trips. I landed an interview and after a great deal of prayer and preparation, I was confident that I would be perfect for the job. 

A few days after my interview, I got an email: “We regret to inform you…” I was crushed and confused. Why would God not bless my desire to send His children, my spiritual siblings, overseas to share the good news with people who had little to no access to the gospel? I felt that I had failed, and immediately began sending out as many applications as I could to right my wrong. I wanted to prove to myself that I was a worthwhile hire. Weeks passed, and I must have sent out over 50 applications. At one point, I was so confident that I could find a job, and so unhappy at my front desk job, that I quit without a backup plan. 

This is where things got hard. Up until this point, I had felt in control of my major life choices. I was entitled! I got to pick my college and my major; I got my first dream job and got to move where I wanted after graduation. I even got to marry the man of my dreams! Yet here I was, just a few short months after the wedding, incredibly vulnerable in a new marriage and now unemployed. I had to confront the truth that I had wrapped my identity so tightly with my performance, with what I was “doing,” that now, with no great act to perform, I felt lost. 

Because I am personally familiar with depression, and had studied it in some of my undergraduate classes, I knew that I was beginning to experience symptoms of depression. This terrified me, and grieved me. I thought I had made the right decision in stepping away from vocational ministry, even though it was incredibly meaningful and joyful work. Had I been wrong? I also had not expected to sink into these feelings so quickly after marrying the love of my life. Lesson number one here: marriage is a wonderful gift from God, and does provide a partner in life, but that does not mean marriage will solve every other problem and hardship in life. While Matt was faithful, tender, full of grace and comforting to me in that season, he wasn’t able to instantly heal my depressive symptoms. 

During that time, the Lord allowed me to read something that greatly impacted me. An author described how it feels to be lost when hiking: it’s disorienting, scary, lonely, and often unexpected. Yet when you find yourself lost in the woods, you’re not supposed to panic. Instead, lost hikers are told to stop, get their bearings, find something familiar, and then proceed with caution, even if their instincts tell them to run. If you don’t know where you’re going, running won’t help. This analogy struck home for me. I felt lost in my vocational direction, but that didn’t mean I was supposed to speed up, apply for yet another job without even reading the full description, and panic. Instead, I knew I had to fight my avoidant tendencies and sit still. 

I won’t pretend that this was a pleasant experience for me. It was extremely uncomfortable, but the Lord reminded me of two things. First, He reminded me that I had picked “humble” as my word of the year for 2024. I had nearly forgotten it with the chaos of wedding planning, but now as life came to a screeching halt, the Lord gently touched that place. More on that another time! Second, the Lord slowly began to bring back old dreams, helping me get my bearings and see what was familiar.

When I was in college, one of my mentors shared an analogy of a stove with four pots on it. She said that the pots can represent life passions or dreams. If every burner is on, it is very difficult to attend to each pot properly. Instead, it is best to focus on the two at the front, allowing the two in the back to simmer. Ever since my college graduation, I had put my dream to be a counselor on the back burner, but I began to reconsider: is this my opportunity to focus on this dream?

I think you all know how this story ends, with me starting the two year educational journey to become a counselor, but the reason I share this is because it’s easy to post a picture announcing a milestone or highlight without revealing the full story behind the picture. I want to remain committed to authenticity on my social media. For me, starting graduate school feels scary, hopeful, daunting, and exciting. I am now three weeks into my second semester, and by God’s grace, the materials I have learned only confirm my desire to pursue this career. As I look back on my interview with the missions agency, and the disappointing email informing me that I was not selected for the position, I see now that God had something even better for me--harder, less immediately gratifying, and more sanctifying--but better. (2nd Corinthians 3:18)