I LOVE my job.
Wait a second, you may be thinking, didn’t the title say you’re quitting?
Yes. Yes, it did.
By all rights and reason, I shouldn’t quit my job. The fact that I even have it is a miracle. Back in 2015 I was working at Starbucks, making minimum wage, and getting to work off my tips. I was 24K in debt while trying to pay rent in Southern California. Even my parents’ discounted rent price was a struggle. To top it off, I needed $10,000 to get a teaching credential so that I could get a job as a teacher, but I had no way to save money.
So I started praying. In March I felt God urge me to trust him and wait. He was going to take care of me.
Okay, God, I said, I’m fine waiting, but my parents are going to need something more.
Then I waited.
For months.
In August 2015, I got a phone call from Classical Academy Middle School, where I had subbed a few times. The principal offered me a part time job teaching online math and urged me to submit an application to the corresponding online high school. “Sometimes they hire the same person,” she said.
When I walked into training the next morning, the first person I met was the Director of Online Learning. She talked to me for 20 minutes, then walked me over to the principal.
I was hired.
In 24 hours, I went from having a minimum wage job with no way to pay to advance my education, getting to work off my tips, to having a full-time salaried position as a teacher… without a credential.
During the next years I found an online credentialing program and was able to pay out of pocket for my credential AND pay off my loans. I am now completely debt free! In addition, during my second year of teaching, the middle school offered me an opportunity to help start a brand new program. I took the challenge, and in three years the program has gone from 36 “Summit-eers” to over 800 students at three campuses. I even won an award for implementation of Summit, and was recognized nationally thanks to my coworkers.
So why am I quitting my it’s-a-miracle-I-even-have-it job?
The simple answer: because God is calling me to something different.
Something… crazy.
I love my job. I love my coworkers, my hours (Mondays & Fridays I work from home!), and the relationships I get to build with families. And don’t even get me started on my students, or this blog post will turn into a novel. Suffice to say, they’re the reason I get up every morning. (And you should see our quote walls!)
And yet, God placed a restlessness in my heart. A desire to go beyond the borders of my home country. A desire to encourage the international church. A desire to labor alongside a team of people working to bring hope to communities who desperately need it.
A desire to bring Jesus into places where he is not welcome.
I have an amazing opportunity next year to do all of those things. In August 2019, I will leave my comfortable job and home to live out of a backpack for 11 months. I will travel to 11 different countries inside the 10/40 window—an area of the world that encompasses the most unreached people groups, and the places that are most hostile to the gospel.
It will be hard to leave my students. I’ll probably cry. A lot. But I know that God is calling me into this ending—this death—for the purpose of a greater resurrection. I can’t see what that is yet, but if the circumstances of me getting my job showed me anything, it is that sometimes we go through periods of confusion, waiting, and seeking in order to step into even greater life and purpose.
I don’t know what God is going to do this year. I don’t know what fruit he will bring out of this. But I know that he is doing a good work in me, and that he will carry it on to completion.
“The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you;
he will never leave you nor forsake you.
Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”
Deuteronomy 31:8
“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
to restore the tribes of Jacob
and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”
Isaiah 49:6
