Please note – at the time of this writing, Jen has made a major announcement on her new podcast, This Is Jen.
This morning I was listening to one of my favorite people, Jennifer Fulwiler on her new podcast, This is Jen. It was basically about blowing up your life and trusting God. Because no one really knows the future – we act like we know and we perceive our future actions like we know, but no one really knows what’s going to happen in the future. Coronavirus anyone? No one knew the entire world would be shut down.
It reminds me a lot of Chapter 15 in her book, Your Blue Flame, where she talks about letting God surprise you with what happens next in your life. And I’ve been thinking about how that relates to my life at least currently. Currently I’m unemployed, I’ve been unemployed for about a year actually and prior to everything shutting down, I almost had an interview with a good job at John Deere. And then everything shut down and the job became put on hold indefinitely. It used to be that every Sunday as soon as I lost my job – that I would pray to God – please, please let me find a good job. And as the year has wore on – I’ve had to change my mindset a little bit. Granted – I do still want a job – but God is obviously telling me is that the job that I get might not look the way I want it to. So here’s the way I’ve looked at it. God is helping me find a purpose.
I have time on my hands, I am helping people, I am keeping house and putting meals on the table – all things that I can control. I made a very dear new friend, that maybe I wouldn’t have made if I hadn’t been unemployed. And this friend although we may have met, maybe we wouldn’t have gotten together every week for “coffee” dates where we go and talk about life and God and books and it really makes my day every time I see her.
I am gaining new skills, this website for instance – I built it – granted with a template that I bought – but I learned how to get it hosted and put into place and tweaked the template to look the way I wanted to look. I have a fairly professional looking blog if I do say so myself and that’s a skill that I can bring to the table for a future job.
I’ve been able to help people – last summer when my sisters were having problems finding babysitters for their children, I went down for a couple of weeks and spent quality time with my nieces and nephews. It is something that I now miss with this quarantine in place.
I have also done some things outside my comfort zone, I have interviewed for dozens of jobs, even ones that are totally outside my wheelhouse and been disappointed in some that I haven’t gotten, but I know that God has a greater surprise in store for my life.
Let God Surprise you – because you don’t know what the future will hold. God will make things bigger and better than you might have ever imagined. You might meet people that leave a big impact on your life, you might find something that will put you out there in a way that you never have before. Jen Fulwiler knows what she’s talking about that’s for sure. I know with her recent announcement – that she’s waiting for God to surprise her as well. I know with the blessings that I have in my life that God is looking for a way to surprise me to – just in a way that I’ve never expected before.
