Trailblazing

Trailblazing

I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.

“Oh, Lord,” I whispered, “I hope I heard you right when I said yes to this.” Nausea rolled over me as my prerecorded interview started to play at a business women’s conference, my image flickering to life on a gigantic screen.

Eighteen months prior to the video’s debut, I had traded a fifteen-year legal practice for an ambiguous journey involving writing, mothering, and trusting God with what might be next. My heart was bruised and tender as I continued to grapple with issues of identity, and now the story of that journey was being played for several hundred business women made up of former coworkers, clients, opposing counsel, and countless other women I’d done business alongside in one way or another.

It is one thing to share hard parts of your faith journey with someone over coffee; it is an entirely different thing to watch an enormous, on-screen version of yourself wipe away tears about making hard choices, going through identity crises, and trusting God as you choose his unknown thing over the path the entire world would say was the smart thing to do. What I did not entirely expect were the tender conversations I would have with so many women after I shared my story. Countless women approached me in the year following to tell me they found encouragement in the midst of their own desert wanderings and to thank me for having the courage to share honestly from the middle space, before there was a neat and tidy ending to the story.

God sometimes asks us to be trailblazers through the wilderness for other women, extending a hand and inviting them to walk alongside us. We build the courage we need to do what God is calling us to by hearing the stories of other women who are in the midst of doing the same.

— Julie

— Today’s Act of Friendship —

Ask God what parts (and how much) of your story need to be shared with a woman in your circles, and create an opportunity to share.