On that one time I almost moved to NYC in 2020

& also on disappointment and the faithful guidance of God

I’ve chosen to stay in things I should have left, and I’ve tried to leave things I needed to stay in. Stubbornness should not be equated with steadfastness. Steadfastness should not be equated with being stuck. The determining factor is my answer to this question:

“Am I listening to Him?”

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Three (!?!) years ago this week, the world shut down.

I had just finished a week of ten-hour class days at Moody Theological Seminary’s campus in downtown Chicago, a refreshing change of scenery from their smaller Michigan satellite campus I normally attended. I booked an AirBnB a couple of blocks from campus and fully embraced my “solo vacation.” My evenings after class that week were spent living my pseudo-single-city-girl life: eating local take-out while watching episodes of “New Girl” in my loft apartment, people-watching on runs along Navy Pier, exploring nearby parks, and picking up groceries for breakfast at a corner store.

Some of my views from that week...living my dream life

This was a welcome change from my life back home in Michigan where I very much felt stuck. At the time, I was soon-to-be 28 and nowhere near where I thought I would (or should) be in life. I was a few weeks post-(another)-break-up, almost a year after a major career change, and instead of a full-time ministry staff role, I was a nanny attending seminary classes at night.

My journal from this season was filled with the handwritten equivalent of size 36pt font words: all-caps HURTING and BORDERLINE ANGRY questions to God. I didn’t understand, and I didn’t want to be where I was. I knew I had obeyed God’s call to give my life fully to vocational ministry, but I felt in a perpetual free fall. I just wanted solid ground. A more normal and easier to explain life, to be honest, that included a kind and loving husband, maybe a couple of kids, and a women’s ministry role that would make sense of what felt like a lot of years of waiting.

Exhibit A

Until the opportunity for my Dream Job appeared on Valentine’s Day (a sign of all signs, I thought — God loved me!). After a few weeks of several Zoom interviews and written application essays and doctrinal statements, I was in the fourth and final round of interviews for a Women’s Discipleship Director at a college ministry in New York City. On paper, it was ideal. I would get to disciple college women, lead Bible studies, engage in an intellectual environment, plan retreats and other events, teach their large group gathering regularly…This was why I left teaching a year ago, I decided.

Now, I didn’t completely disregard the Lord in this process. This opportunity seemed to fall in my lap and doors kept opening, so I walked through them, because that made sense to me.

2019, and the first couple of months of 2020, had been painful and disappointing. I was wrestling with God about His purposes and goodness. It had been several months of surrender and in my eyes, I still didn’t see God providing in the void. Ironically, my “word of the year” was yield, defined by Webster's Dictionary as “to bear or bring forth as a natural product, especially a result of cultivation; to give up and cease resistance or contention.” What I couldn’t see yet was that in order to yield the fruit of the harvest I had been waiting for, the soil of my heart needed to be cultivated. An aspect of cultivating was ceasing resistance to the hand of the Gardener and allowing Him to prune and plant where needed.

So yes, I needed to be in Chicago that week, for both a class and to “test the waters.” Could I really do this? Could I actually live “city life” alone?

Little did I know that the Lord was allowing this process to test me too.

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The reality is, the current of the Spirit will always take me where I need to go, regardless of my attitude. My attitude, then, determines my experience.

Do I want to be at peace?

I will if I willingly allow the Good Shepherd to lead, through valleys and over mountains, into pastures and beside quiet waters.

When He calls me to go, He is protecting me and bringing me to the right path, though I at times cannot understand.

When He calls me to stay, it is so that I may know His steadfast love more intimately and reflect His faithfulness even in the seemingly unseen places where He has kept me.

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Deuteronomy 8:2 recalls how the Lord led the Israelites into the wilderness “that He might humble [them], testing [them] to know what was in [their] heart, whether [they] would keep His commandments or not.” This was not a cruel leading, nor did God abandon His people, but He provided for them the entire way (Deut. 8:4) and brought their families into a good land after forty years in the wilderness (Deut. 8:7-10).

I continually go back to the first few books of the Old Testament, which tell the story of the exodus and the 40 years of wandering. I love these stories from the history of God’s people because I am the Israelites. I too quickly forget, quickly complain, and continually need to return to the Lord my God for mercy and guidance. Like the Israelites, my plans have so often been redirected and are so different from my original idea, yet like the Israelites as well, my God is the same good God yesterday as He is today, and He has and will remain faithful to the end.

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Around the same time as this interview process and COVID-shutdowns, I was reading Lysa Terkeurst’s book It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered. The author warns against a potential danger that can come from our disappointments if we’re not aware:

“A heart hungry for something to ease the ache of disapopintment is especially susceptible to the most dangerous forms of desire. Especially when that heart isn’t being proactive about taking in truth and staying in community with healthy, humble people living out that truth. Remember, dangerous desires birthed inside our unsettled disappointments are nothing but a setup for a takedown. A quick rise to a hard fall….What we are all truly desiring is more of God; His best is the only source of satisfaction. He is the only answer to our every desire. He holds all the answers to all our disappointments and will direct our desires in His way, in His will, and in His timing. He’s got a good plan for good things. He doesn’t give His gifts wrapped in packages of confusion and anxiety and guilt and shame (James 1:16-17).”

In the wake of their disappointment over the timing and seeming lack of provision of a new home in the way they thought best, the Israelites crafted a golden calf, a created “god” of their own imagination (Exodus 32). A plague followed (Exodus 32:35). In the wake of my own disappointment, I was (and still am) tempted to “hurry God up” and create my own path forward in my unmet longings. Thankfully, God has rescued me in His mercy from the self-wrapped packages I wanted to attribute to “God’s provision” when in actuality they were of my own making.

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I still remember asking at the end of my last interview if they thought that this “coronavirus situation” would affect any of this process. The vice president of the organization assured me that he didn’t think it would be a hindrance. A few hours later, several universities announced a shutdown for at least two weeks. The rest of the world would soon follow.

And then it was radio silence.

I received an automated email from HR a couple of months later apologizing for the delay, explaining that leadership was trying to reorient with “these unprecedented times” and that someone would follow up with me soon. I didn’t hear from them until several months later when I received another brief email from HR, thanking me for my time, but that the position was closed. I later found out that the ministry at this campus had been dismantled.

Through this disappointment, the Lord led me to stay in Michigan for a few more years. A door opened for me to work at a Detroit pregnancy center. I loved my job; it cultivated in me a deeper heart for counseling women in pain rather than stepping immediately into my default “teacher mode.” I met women (and men) who changed me. I also met my now-husband, thanks to my 200-mile proximity to him. Not sure I would have reached him on the dating app location range if I would have been in New York City, and what a gift I would have missed.

This is one of my “stones of remembrance,” a landmark of God’s faithfulness that I hold onto and will share with my children when they ask “What did that situation mean to you?” Then I will tell of God’s faithfulness (Joshua 4:5-7). This stone of remembrance, though is not necessarily a pretty one — it’s a little rougher around the edges than other stones in my collection. Disappointment isn’t shiny or attractive, and this story still holds some unresolved prayers for me. Still, it’s a piece in the mosaic of the level and steady path the Lord has built and is building for me.

And He is doing the same for you too.