When Life Doesn’t Turn Out Like you Imagined
“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life— your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.” — Romans 1-2 (MSG)
This blog is about how to glorify God when your workplace is less than ideal or even toxic.
To begin with, I want to acknowledge mental health and how what we do and how we perceive our value, places a toll on our mental health. We need to find peace with our true lives to find peace with our mind. All of us have a role to play in life and comparison can be the death of us as we scroll social media and as we place idealism onto another role, job or ministry.
One of my dreams for my life was to complete bible college and somehow, I would obtain a dream role and ministry job within her walls. Serving all the days of my life and juggling my other dream of a big family. The second dream was that I would do ministry work alongside my husband. We would both serve and laugh and juggle the very big family we wanted. The third dream of mine is that I would spend all my days writing and living by the beach.
My reality is I work for a Christian bookshop.
I work casually in retail two days a week. My husband is a pastor, but I don’t serve alongside him. We have very different roles in life. We have five children, four of the children have special needs. I love writing but I am by no means a book writer, a theological writer or a fiction writer. I didn’t plan to spend 16 years of my life working the same retail job. I believed I was called to both my family and church ministry and this was a fill in position why I waited for the right position to appear and we grew our family.
It never appeared and I’ve never had another leader acknowledge my ‘leadership gifting’. I’d like to suggest to you, that that’s because it is not there. Because the role I was meant for, was not the one I imagined.
What I have discovered is that my family is my ministry. They are my priority. We have kids with special needs.
I have discovered that my workplace is a means to an end but also I have found ministry within my workplace. I genuinely love people and want to be of service to both the customer and my workplace business. That God can use me to find the right book, say the right thing, show kindness. I am able to be available to my family. I don’t get late night calls, I’m not required to be anywhere. When my rostered day finishes, I leave it at the door and head to my role as wife and mum.
I am happy to attend work these days. It is not a stressful job. I can access friendships there and chat with people and also, I enjoy the tasks. I have learnt that workplaces can be toxic. I experienced this firsthand when I worked in the marketing department doing database entry which I adored. I took maternity leave and after wanting to return I requested to cut my days and asked for flexibility, my request was denied and I was only offered a retail position. It has taken many years of heart work to not feel bitter and betrayed. I did actually resign and try another workplace only to return to the bookshop as my first priority, my family was being affected.
These days I feel I am in a good mental health place. I am finding space to follow my heart. I am finding space to worship God with the life he has given me, not the life I imagined but by honouring what is in my hand now and finding true satisfaction in that, not comparing or waiting for the next open door I am finding true contentment in the now. I don’t know what the future holds and that’s okay.
I do know that in all circumstances we are called to glorify God. I hope this encourages you Life doesn’t have to look a certain way for you to be used by God. We all have a role, and we all have value.
#glorifyGod #offering #lifeascalling