Buckle Your Seatbelt
Beware; the rest of this book may build your faith and blow your mind.
The move-out plan had to be established. A couple of things made it a challenge. Number one, the relationships I had in New York. Number two, where would I live? Number three, where would I work and number four, would my mom approve? Yes, you read number four right: I was twenty-three and my mom’s approval still weighed heavily. So let’s start with hurdle number four and count down from there.
In the past when my mother felt as though something wasn’t right, usually she was correct. A mother’s intuition, I guess. Time and time again when I thought something was a good plan, if my mother didn’t think it was, quickly I found out it wasn’t right. I really trusted her gut.
With moving, she didn’t think it was wise considering the circumstances under which I would be moving. To further explain, I had gotten a lot of advice on the move. One piece of advice was to move without a job for a month! This way I could get a feel for Baltimore and then work after the month was up. Initially I thought this advice was crazy; who moves without a job in this economy? Who would let me live with them without an income? Did that mean during the month off I would be out searching for a job? Where would I look? What in the world would I tell my boss, the whole office?! What would they think of me?
At the same time, taking a month off appealed to someone like me who deals with depression and who is also an introvert. Looking back to when I lived in New Jersey it was clear that I am someone who needs transition time, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I prayed a lot; I prayed that God would make it clear as day what I needed to do. I entrusted my life to him and put it in his hands. Whatever his will was, I would follow it, but at the same time God knew the desires of my heart. I journaled a lot while thinking about other women who have left their lives in one location to go where God called them. God had never let me down before, and if I moved without a job I was sure that God would not allow me to falter.
I decided that I would move that May, although it was the scariest decision I’ve ever made in my life. Funny how God works, though; I had a good paying full-time job at the time which allowed me to really save up, and I was also expecting a tax return very soon. I was more than set financially for over a month. I thought that maybe God had wanted me to have this job as a means to an end, and if so then me staying at the job was using it against God’s intended end result. Not to say that was really why God gave me the job; I don’t presume to really know, but at the same time as I consider how my life moved from that point on it kind of indicates that the move was God’s will.
Before church started on a Sunday morning, a really wise woman asked me how I was doing. I told her what I was going through and feeling, that I had a lot of feelings of guilt over leaving my life in New York. She understood that and didn’t tell me what to do but gave me Hebrews 11. I clung to that passage for dear life. Making a faithful decision has a way of making you do that.
I still remember reading that chapter every morning; on the way to work my Bible was open on the passenger seat. During my lunch break I would read it again. I had developed a deep conviction that God was calling me to move, to leave my comfort zone all for him, not for Patrick. I had to come to this conviction before I made up my mind. I needed the foundation of the Word for my strength; it’s all I had. I had to make this move because God wanted me to and allowed me to do so. My decision must be based on this and this alone, not because Patrick said so, not because I wanted to go, but because God made it clear that I needed to go.
You see, it’s hard to explain to everyone the whole process involved in the move. I try not to do anything without God’s approval first. I love that this book allows me to let everyone know what is really involved in having a relationship with God. There is a deep spiritual side of this story that gives God all the glory.