Chapter 7 - When Staying Costs More Than Leaving

After many years with the State Office of Mental Health, I eventually served as Statewide Workforce Development Director. The work was challenging but meaningful. It had become familiar—steady. It felt like stewardship.

Then leadership changed.

I was informed that my position would require relocating to Baton Rouge three days a week, moving my domicile there, and absorbing the cost. What looked administrative quickly became deeply personal. Relocating wasn’t just about geography. It meant uprooting church, family, stability—the quiet foundations built over years.

I stood at a familiar intersection: responsibility, discernment, trust.

In time, the choice became clear. I could comply, or I could protect the life my family and I had built. What troubled me most wasn’t inconvenience—it was recognizing leadership decisions that no longer aligned with the care I believed leadership should embody.

After prayerful consideration, I chose early retirement. No drama. No public conflict. Just a quiet closing of a season that shaped me through 17 different roles, over 23-years. And yet, provision was already moving.

I retired on a Friday. The following Monday I began work at an agency where I had been employed nearly 27 years earlier. No gap. No scrambling. Just gentle timing.

A year later, a small part-time opportunity opened at the counseling center in my church. Eighteen months after that, I stepped into it full time. And with the clarity of hindsight, I realized something humbling:

I was now doing the very work I once believed I had missed decades earlier.

What felt like delay was not loss.

It was formation.

I had not missed my calling.

It had been quietly prepared through years I could never have designed myself.

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Have you ever had to leave something good to remain faithful to something deeper?

Where might God already be preparing provision as one season closes?