Middle

Middle

“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”

I PAUSED JUST INSIDE THE DOOR, momentarily taken aback at the sight of round tables and chairs for over four hundred businesswomen from my community. I was suddenly wondering why I was there, sharing a still-tender part of my story that did not yet have a Hollywood happy ending.

Taking a deep breath, I—once again—gave it back to Jesus and walked to my assigned seat, a pleasant smile masking the slight tremble in my limbs.

A mere eighteen months prior, I’d walked away from my legal career after a lifetime—since age twelve—of striving to be a lawyer, and I was very much still in the middle of the process—a jumbled up conundrum of varied emotions, uncertain about what God had next but knowing firmly that he was calling me to something new, despite not yet seeing it.

And that’s the message I shared in a video interview—hope from the middle, certainty in God in the midst of an uncertain future, encouraging others who were contemplating their own countercultural career change. It was an excruciating day, watching that video play before all those businesswomen, and I left feeling scraped emotionally raw.

In the weeks, months, and years after that queasy day, I’ve had countless whispered conversations—lunches, emails, phone calls—women confessing to dreams requiring them to trade certainty for uncertainty, thanking me for sharing from the middle and for being an encouraging voice to take the Option B path and to trust God to see when they could not.

My obedience in sharing from the middle, while God was still working it out, while I was still waiting for the Hollywood ending had and continues to have ripple effects that are still rippling, still encouraging, still creating change.

Lord, may we have the courage to allow women to journey with us, allowing them to watch as your faithfulness unfolds around us, allowing them to bear witness to your goodness and your promises. Amen.

-Julie

One Good Step: Allow women to journey alongside you as you wait on God rather than waiting until you have the perfect “happily ever after” to share.