Chapter 4 - From Letting Go to Looking Forward

After declining the opportunity at Colorado Christian University, I returned home with far more questions than clarity. The door I had believed God opened now felt firmly closed. I didn’t have a new plan—only the quiet resolve to move forward with what was still in front of me.

So I did what seemed most responsible and most necessary: I began looking for work in the counseling and behavioral health field.

I was uncertain, but I was not without hope.

The first position I applied for, I didn’t get. That early rejection landed heavily on top of an already tender season. It quietly reinforced the fear that had followed me home—that perhaps I had stepped away from something I would not get back. Still, I applied again and this time, I was hired in my first position with the Louisiana State Office of Mental Health.

At the time, I saw this as a practical outcome of persistence. Looking back now, I see it as the gentle hand of God at work in a season where His voice felt quieter than I wished. What I didn’t know then was that this step—born out of uncertainty and necessity—would become the doorway into a career that lasted more than two decades and shaped me in ways I could not yet comprehend.

I didn’t enter the State system with a sense of calling. I entered with a need for employment, a desire to be responsible, and a lingering ache from a door I believed had closed behind me. Yet God, in His patience, didn’t ask me to see the full picture before taking the next faithful step. 

He only asked me to keep walking. What I could not yet see was that the same God who had shaped the early whisper of my calling was now shaping what would be the long middle of my life—the part that didn’t feel dramatic or spiritually significant at the time, but which would quietly build the foundation for everything to come.

I had not stepped out of God’s care.

I had simply stepped into a season of preparation that would take longer than I could have anticipated.

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Have you ever taken a “next step” without really knowing where it would ultimately lead?

How has God used necessity in your life as a doorway into something deeper?