The moment is stuck on eternal pause in my memory.
I was 23 and a new master’s candidate at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, and I’d headed to a young adult conference with friends from my new church. The speaker had just told us how, after finishing seven years of graduate school, he had received his doctorate.
“And then,” he said, “God told me to lay it all down and start a church instead. So I did.”
My response was a shudder and instant prayer. “God, thank you for calling me into a field of study where you can use me. At least I’ll never have to do that!”
It’s become increasingly clear over the 14 years since that this was my own Laughing Sarah moment, the one God’s used time and again to remind me of his sense of humor.
I think of that moment sometimes when I am standing before a crowd of 80 middle school students, exhorting them to follow God’s plan for their lives. I thought of it over the years I gathered with other believers at the Robin Hood statue in Nottingham (yes, that Nottingham), then strapped a on backpack filled with sandwiches and packets of crisps and headed out to Old Market Square in search of the city’s modern poor. I even had some awareness of it at my magical wedding six years ago, when the guests gathered from around the country and across the pond at a picnic site on the edge of the Grand Canyon, and my English groom and I celebrated our improbable but perfect pairing and the life of ministry together we had ahead of us.
For implicit in that long-ago conference speaker’s story was a challenge. Was I, an ambitious, career-driven young woman with big dreams of changing the world through journalism, ready to give up on my own plans and accept instead whatever God might have in store for me?
No way.
I had been nervous about taking on the large student loan debt that came with accepting my place at Medill, however it seemed clear that this was the right path for me. My affinity with words had always been accompanied by a love for people and an inner drive to somehow bring justice to the world through their stories. So I stepped out in faith and moved from Phoenix to Chicago.
I quickly fell in love with the bustling, can-do spirit of Chicago, revealed not just through architecture tours and Mayor Daley’s press conferences, but also through my assigned beat of covering the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA), which really meant writing about the busy city’s poor and marginalized. The first time I took a bus to the South Side to attend a CHA residents’ meeting I realized what it was like to be a racial minority - I was the only white person on the bus, in the nearby supermarket and at the meeting. In my articles I tried hard to represent the uncertainty and vulnerability of the residents who were being moved out of soon-to-be-demolished CHA buildings, many with no place to go.
I moved on to the arts beat, and then did my quarter of reporting from Capitol Hill in Washington, writing about politics and people for as a bureau correspondent for a large Mississippi newspaper. It was a heady time, and as my journalism skills grew, so did my faith, thanks to the strong community of Christian friends from the local church I’d discovered just after moving to Chicago.
And then I graduated, and it was time to search for a job. I’d become so involved in serving and learning at my church that I wanted to stay in Chicago so I moved into a church family’s spare bedroom and began the job search.
I’d barely begun applying for newspaper jobs, though, when I felt a jarring in my soul. My emotions began to swing back and forth, and it seemed I couldn’t put enough words on the pages of my prayer journal to capture their intensity.
On one hand I was raring to get out into the world, to do the thing I’d been preparing for a decade to do. At 24 I had achieved degrees, interned, worked many part-time jobs, traveled and studied abroad, volunteered and generally sucked the marrow out of life, doing all those things bright young people are supposed to do to prepare themselves for the professional world.
Yet on the other hand, I became increasingly discontent. I cried out to God, asking him what I was made for. It seemed that journalism was the perfect fit for my passions and talents and, indeed, I’d been asking God to direct my path since junior high. The very decision to attend Medill had been prompted by God speaking to me in many ways through many people. But something felt off.
“See God,” I reminded him. “You called me to Chicago, you wanted me to be a journalist. This is your idea, and now I have this student loan debt. You’ve promised to take care of me. So what’s the deal? What’s wrong?”
I began to hear a very big question forming in my mind. It emerged bit by bit in my journal, and it scared me. The question was, “Will you let go? Will you give up on your own dreams and plans for your life, and accept the ones I have for you?
I didn’t want to confront it, let alone answer it. Yet I tried, as much as I could. “Yes, God, I’ll follow your plans for my life. Yes, I’ll do what you want, even if it turns out it’s not journalism.” I tried to convince my reluctant self to let go, to lay down the work and the sacrifice and dreams, and be ready to do something else instead. But part of me still held back.
Then I reread the story of God asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. It suddenly hit me just how ridiculous this request of God’s was. God had promised Abraham that he’d have as many descendants as there are stars in the sky, and yet he was asking him to kill his son, his miracle child? How would that work? And suddenly I knew that, for me, anyway, there was only one way to really lay down my dreams before the Lord. It was to make them impossible. So I stopped applying for jobs.
I knew how stupid this decision was in the eyes of the world, and my family was understandably concerned. But I’d done it. I’d laid down ambition and self-advancement and God had filled that empty space with his incredible peace. I wept, and then I remembered my arrogant, narrow-minded response to the conference speaker’s surrender story: I’d congratulated myself on choosing a field where God could use me, so I’d never have to give it up. I laughed through my tears. How much I’d learned in only one year.
A few temp jobs kept me going while I waited for God to reveal the next step for me, and somehow I always had just enough, thanks mainly to the kind family I was boarding with. I knew I’d made the right decision, because the peace stayed, and they agreed with me. Now my life and career were really and truly in God’s hands.
About a month after I stopped applying for jobs, I got a call. I’d interviewed unsuccessfully with a large local newspaper chain awhile back, however an editor had called to say they were posting a job listing for a brand-new position the next day. ““We thought of you right away when you interviewed for us before, but it’s taken awhile for this posting to come together,” he explained. “It’s for a full-time lifestyle features reporter.”
Features reporting was my dream job! But first I checked with God. Was it OK to go for this job? I hadn’t applied, in fact they had called me. I felt nothing but peace. So I interviewed, was offered the position and started two weeks later. On my first day of work I knew that this was what God had had for me all along, and that he’d used the waiting period to teach me true surrender. “I’ve got it!” I thought. “Now I can be a journalist. What a great end to this story!”
But that wasn’t the end of the story, of course. I loved my new job and I flourished, growing personally and professionally as I strove to faithfully and compassionately retell the stories of the hundreds of fascinating people I interviewed. I began to collect local and national reporting awards, but when God started to tug at my heart again, this time I knew how to listen.
Just three and a half years later, at age 28, I handed in my resignation, sold my car and my bed and got on a plane to England. I’d heard about a large, vibrant church in Nottingham that had an 11-month discipleship training program for young people, mostly new college grads, who wanted to take a year out of their lives and simply serve. I didn’t know why God might be asking me to leave my career and go to another country to help in a church office, clean toilets and hand out sandwiches to the homeless, but after 18 months of praying and exploring it was clear this was what God had next for me.
I was a little sad to leave my newspaper job but mostly excited about this next step, and my wonderful colleagues cheered me on. When the editor-in-chief loomed over my desk, my resignation form in hand, and demanded, “Are you sure you want me to sign this? Think about it? Are you sure?", I didn’t hesitate. “Yes,” I said. Surrender.
Somehow it wasn’t a huge surprise when my year in England turned into two, so I could do a leadership training course. I continued to support myself by freelancing, savings and with the help of a generous community. Two years turned into three when I accepted an internship to train in large-church children’s ministry, and three into four and five, after I married a fellow children’s pastor.
I suspect that God laughs, just like I do, when I remember that long-ago conference moment. You see, the end to this particular story is that I am now back in Chicago, back at that same church I found in grad school in 2002. But I am not a journalist.
While in England I heard that my old Chicago church was advertising for a children’s pastor and, with prompting from my British husband, I applied, only to be offered instead the newly created role of middle school pastor. Although my gut reaction was, “Youth pastor? I’m not a youth pastor! 7th & 8th graders terrify me!”, it took only a few hours, and some nudging from my adventure-eager husband, to know that this was the next thing God was asking me to say yes to. I did, and four years ago we flew over the Atlantic Ocean, destination Chicago. Life as a large-church youth pastor is challenging and requires all the skills and experience I’ve garnered so far, yet I know 100 percent that I am doing what I’m made for, at least what I am made for right now.
I frequently pass the journalism buildings at Northwestern, and sometimes I wonder about the path God started me on then. I still don’t know how everything fits together in the end but I do know one thing. I’ve learned how to say yes, and I’ve never been sorry.
