Last Friday marked my first anniversary of quitting the job that paid over $100k for 15 years.

I started a part-time job the following week, earning 80% less with no health insurance or vacation days.

No, a rich uncle didn’t die, and I didn’t win the lottery.

Sometimes you reach a point where the pain of staying is greater than the sacrifice of leaving.

I would miss the money.

I wouldn’t miss Mondays.

What once was a direct answer to prayer and God’s provision can eventually become a hindrance to the next step God wants you to take.

His blessings are often for a season (or 15) and are not intended to last until the Social Security benefits roll in.

But it’s easy to grow comfortable after fighting for years through monumental financial struggles.

You still feel the unpaid medical bills.

You remember selling the home your family loved and moving into a rental.

You vividly recall waking up to your bank account being frozen due to an outstanding income tax bill.

And even though it was years ago, your heart still aches thinking about how you and your spouse spent months sleeping on the furthest opposite edges of the bed.

And once the job stress fractures begin to appear years later, they seem insignificant compared to what you’ve already survived.

Not only that, you feel ungrateful and guilty for being unhappy with the job that God provided to save your family.

Things are stable. Trust has been restored. Wounds healed.

So, you stay.

And stay.

Are you imprisoned by gratitude or fear?

Or both?

You vacillate between asking God to forgive your lack of gratitude and begging Him to show you a way out.

Days pass.

Years pass.

Your spouse grows weary of hearing you complain.

You’re tired of yourself.

What can a person do?

First, seek the Lord.

Yes, I had been talking with God for years, but now I was standing at the cliff, ready to take a leap of faith, and I wanted assurances.

I didn’t get any.

But, I also didn’t get any resistance.

The second thing I did was talk to my wife. I had already decided that if she expressed the slightest hesitation, I wasn’t leaving.

That was my litmus test.

And to my surprise, she was at complete peace with me leaving.

The only thing left for me to do was…

Take a step. Stir the waters. Break beyond the confines of my debilitating thought patterns.

So, I looked at everything God had already done in my life.

Nearly forty years of title examination experience.

Relationships I’d built over decades.

Friends in law firms and the Register of Deeds office.

Instead of waiting for a miracle to fall out of the sky, I did something I’d never done before. I humbled myself and reached out to close friends in the business for help.

Slowly, a hazy glimpse of a plan was forming on the distant horizon, and in my mind, it only worked one way.

If I could get a full-time position with benefits at the Register of Deeds office while rebuilding my title business on the side, I thought I could eventually replace my income.

So, I marketed the business for the first time ever and contacted the powers that be at the Registry.

Then, I waited.

And waited.

The wheels of county government grind very slowly.

Five weeks passed without a word, and my hopes began to crack.

The full-time county job with benefits was the cornerstone of my plan.

Then, a day I’ll never forget. Still working my corporate job, my frustration had reached a boiling point as I was responding to an email from the company admin.

Everything in me wanted to scream two words…

I quit!

But I didn’t. I replied to her question and hit send.

At that exact second, my cell phone vibrated. It was the text message I had been waiting on for five weeks. She thought she could hire me.

Can you believe that timing?

I took a deep breath, smiled, and thanked God.

The plan was coming together.

Or so I thought.

A short time later, I learned the position wouldn’t be full-time after all.

It was only part-time with no benefits.

The cornerstone of my plan had just fallen apart.

Fear flooded me. The road I thought I could see suddenly disappeared into the darkness.

Was I being reckless? Was I confusing my own desires with God’s leading? Was I about to make the worst decision of my life?

I got down on my knees and poured my heart out to the Lord.

“Am I crazy for doing this?”

When I stood up, the phone rang.

It was an old friend, a real estate secretary, whom I had known for thirty years, but hadn’t worked for in a long time.

She had a title order for me—the first one she had sent after my recent marketing efforts.

It wasn’t a huge order. It didn’t come with any guarantees for steady work.

It certainly didn’t replace a six-figure income.

But it didn’t need to.

It was enough.

Enough to convince me that I was still on the right track and God was still leading.

And can you believe the timing of the call?

Again.

One door may have narrowed, but God was opening others.

Just as important, Sandra still had peace.

I did, too.

So I did what any sane, rational 58-year-old man would do. I jumped off the six-figure cruise ship and clung to a sliver of driftwood.

I took the part-time position with the hopes that it would eventually become full-time. It did six months later.

Looking back, I also realized something else.

When you waste a ton of emotional energy being unhappy with your job, you’re not the only one who pays the price.

Your spouse pays.

Your family pays.

Your friends pay.

Eventually, your employer pays too.

It must be scientifically true that you can’t give your best to a company that is emotionally draining you.

The company deserved better.

I think they felt it.

Eventually, I began to feel them feeling it.

Leaving the company was the scariest, yet best decision I’ve ever made.

Not financially.

Maybe not professionally.

But definitely personally, emotionally, and mentally.

I can’t help but think about Joshua.

Before Israel crossed the Jordan River, God repeatedly told Joshua, “Be strong and courageous.”

Then Joshua ordered the priests into the flooded river.

Only after they stepped into the water did God part it.

The miracle came only after the step of obedience.

God didn’t ask Joshua to understand the whole plan.

He asked him to trust Him enough to take the next step.

That has become one of the great lessons of my life.

God rarely illuminates the entire road.

He usually gives us enough light for the next stretch.

Driving a mountain road at night, your headlights don’t reveal every curve waiting ahead.

They only show enough asphalt to keep moving.

You trust the next few seconds.

Then the next.

Then the next.

That’s how God has led me.

Not by showing me the entire journey, but by faithfully giving me enough light for the next step.

One of the first things I did after leaving was change the screensaver on my computer.

One word.

Forward.

It’s still there today.

Not once in the past year have I visited my former company’s website.

I’ve been curious.

Of course I have.

But curiosity has a way of looking backward. Looking back too long leads to bitterness, and I have no room for that. The company provided for my family’s needs for 15 years.

And I was grateful. Gratitude remembers yesterday’s blessings.

Faith moves forward.

Paul wrote that he was “forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead.” (Philippians 3:13-14.)

I don’t think he meant pretending the past never happened.

I think he meant refusing to live there.

I hope you take away one point from my story –

Don’t spend years wasting your emotional energy in a job that drains the life out of you.

It costs everyone.

Seek the Lord.

Talk with the people who know you best.

Take an honest inventory of the gifts, relationships, and opportunities God has already placed in your hands.

Then trust Him with the next step, even if that’s all you can see.

Your headlights won’t show you the whole road.

Joshua couldn’t see the other side of the Jordan.

Neither could I.

But God has never asked us to see the whole journey.

Only the next faithful step.

Be strong and courageous.

Don’t look back.

Then…

Keep moving forward.

Feature image by Evgeni Tcherkasski from Pixabay

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