We were almost to Austin, and I needed to tell my boss I was quitting. We had driven from San Antonio together for a women’s leadership panel. I had planned on bringing up my departure much earlier on our trip, but the moment hadn’t felt right, and now as she got on the toll road and asked me how I was feeling about work, I knew I had to seize the moment.
“Funny you should ask…”
This moment had been months in the making. God had been working on my heart through books, people, dreams, scripture, and podcasts. He was asking me to leave my full-time role as a Partner Marketing Manager and to trust Him with my next steps, and I wasn’t going easily. I loved my job—I loved the financial stability it provided, the accolades, the sense of accomplishment, and the people…especially my boss and my team.
But I had two very small boys at home, and I felt like I was missing huge chunks of their lives. I knew I wanted to work, but I needed something more flexible and more part time, and this wasn’t it. I was worried about how quitting would impact my marriage, my family, my quality of life, and, honestly, my self image and self worth. I wrestled with God over my decision.
Finally, after months of seeking an alternative, I prayed the anything prayer, a prayer God keeps me bringing me back to again and again. It sounds a bit different each time, but it goes something like this: “I give up. I’m tired. I’m tired of trying. I’m tired of pushing my agenda. I’m willing to do anything you’re calling me into, and I’m willing to leave what you’re calling me out of. Your will, not mine.” I prayed a week before this trip to Austin.
I took a deep breath and began my verbal resignation. When I got to the end, my boss smiled and said, “I can finally leave too.” It turned out that she had been contemplating leaving but felt like she would be disappointing the team and me. We ended up leaving the company within a week of each other.
A few days before my departure, one of the companies I partnered with approached me with an offer.
“What would it take for you to contract with us?”
I laughed.
“I would need to work two days a week. I would want to make an insane amount of money, and I would work strictly from home with no travel.”
It was a ridiculously impossible request.
“Done,” she said.
“What?!” I exclaimed.
“You can have all of that.”
This was it. This was the result of surrender. Of accepting the detour.
It was abundance and goodness that only God could provide. That job opportunity would not have happened if I had ignored the gentle nudge of change.
I don’t presume that every darkened threshold will lead to material goodness, but I know that it almost always leads to abundance of some kind: growth, love, self-understanding, vulnerability, knowing. And so, my prayer is that I would continue to risk when I don’t want to and to surrender when I want to push through because there is goodness in the detour.
Lyndsey Amen Ribble lives in San Antonio with her husband and four sons (aged 5,4, 2 and 2 mos). She loves reading, writing, traveling, food (cooking it, eating it, taking pictures of it…), wine, hole in the wall anything, and forming community in unexpected places. She has a heart for bringing restoration to broken people and loving the unloved. She writes about all of these things and attempting to find balance at inlamensterms.com.
Beautiful!! Love you, Lindsey!