Abby and Eason,
I got married a few weeks after I graduated from college. My husband lived in Austin, so I needed to change jobs again.
Honestly, I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I finished college, but I didn’t really have a vision for what “work” would look like. I played with the idea of athletic training as a masters degree.
But an athletic training job would present the same problems that gymnastics jobs presented. Both jobs required a lot of evening and weekend work because that is when athletes work out most of the time. And, in my mind, that would be bad for my marriage. I wanted to be home when my husband was home, and I hoped that when, one day, we had kids I could be home when they were home.
So, I tried to find another route. I ended up at a nutraceutical company. The company did everything from manufacturing, to physician sales, to patient visits with our doctors. And, of course, we filled the prescriptions the doctors gave.
My job initially was to work on physician sales, but eventually I got to do everything except for doctor work. I really loved learning about supplements, but they were expensive so I never got to try any of them.
The owner (doctor), his wife, and I found a great work relationship. They were more visionary, so I had the opportunity to help them figure out how to execute the vision.
But, they were also weird. They were really into new age stuff and often did things that I wasn’t comfortable with. It wasn’t uncommon to see them creating incense and worship around products to bring them success. One time the wife even had the cops called on her because she did some stuff with weird incense under a tree. The person who called thought she was setting the tree on fire!
I stayed with the company for a couple years, but each year things got more and more weird. Toward the end they were putting pictures of some guy inside the manufacturing machines so that his presence would make the products more whole.
Eventually, I needed to quit. I wish I could say that it was because I felt uncomfortable with the things they were doing. While I did feel uncomfortable, that wasn’t my reason for quitting. My reason was that I had gotten divorced and needed a higher paying job to be able to meet my bills.
When I quit the doctor and his wife asked me to stay. They had never had kids and were in their 70’s. They told me that they would leave the company to me, and that until then they would increase my marketing budget to a really high amount so that I could begin to take the business the way I wanted it to go.
But, the way I wanted it to go was away from the new age stuff… I wasn’t a Christian back then, but I knew what worshiping things besides God looked like. And, I knew that was wrong.
So, I held onto my conviction that I needed to build a life/job/income for myself, and I chose to leave. They made it intensely hard and made me feel very bad for my decision. But, I knew my decision was right.
What I want you to hear is that a job shouldn’t define you. You shouldn’t feel like you are involved in something you are uncomfortable with.
Today, I would say it this way. You are a child of God. Nothing – not money, not big titles, not accomplishments – should define you besides your identity as a child of God. It is easy for us to let money, accomplishments, and job titles take on identity. You will have to be very intentional to make sure they don’t. It is good to work hard – to earn good money, to be promoted to bigger job titles, to get recognized for accomplishments – but they aren’t who you are.
Rest in the fact that you are found in Jesus. He offers you everything you need.
I love you both so much!
Mom