Note: This is part 2 of a 4 part series entitled “When God Closes Doors”.
When I interviewed with the owner of the company for my next job, the thing I was most impressed with was his openness to share his strong faith in Christ, which in many ways was in stark contrast to my own faith.
Four years prior my dad had died. I had prayed so hard as we raced the five hours to the hospital at 3 a.m. that he would make it. Less than an hour before we got there, we got the call he didn’t survive.
An hour? Why couldn’t God have given him one more hour?
I was angry. I hated God. Prayer was stupid.
I still remember holding my dad’s hand in the hospital room, making the promise to teach my nephew to fish (a promise I didn’t keep, probably in part because I believed he never heard it). In the months and years that followed, whenever a moment came where I felt my dad should have been there, that image came to mind. I hated God again and again.
The reality was, I hated God because I didn’t know God. I didn’t have a relationship with him. So often in life it is easy to hate things we don’t know or fully understand. It is easy to misdirect our emotions because we haven’t worked on our own internal battles.
Jeremiah 29:11-13 reads, “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.’”
God knew what he was doing when it was my dad’s time to leave the world. He also knew what he was doing when he brought my next mentor into my life.
The owner of the business’s faith in God was so strong that he even named his primary product after the infinite intelligence God has. Our weekly mentor meetings were about marketing, but more importantly, they were about life.
He saw me as a person. He took me under his wings, and in many ways, he became the father figure I missed so much in my life.
While I honed my skills as a marketer during the years I worked beside him, what I developed even more was an understanding of what it meant to lead others through faith.
He hired an executive coach who worked with me on becoming a true mentor and not a manager who only cared about numbers. I learned the importance of knowing more about who my people were than how they did their job. I learned the need to set our goals as a team, to schedule time for mentor meetings, and to create processes and training that gave them the tools to be successful.
Unfortunately, I didn’t learn the tools fast enough. In one of my mentor meetings with the owner of the company, in a moment of frustration, I told him maybe he should just hire someone else who could lead the department better than I could.
By that point in my life, I was again traveling a lot for the organization. I had not recognized how I had let that creep back in. My family was suffering, but like he always did, my husband supported me fully in growing my career.
Our company was growing. We had recently hired several new IT team members to take our product to the next level.
After leading a product launch in our Dallas office for a new program I had helped create from the ground up, I hurried into an office for my next call of the day. As I hung up and wrote my recap notes, I heard two members of the new IT team talking really negatively about me behind my back.
In a moment of emotional anger, I let my pride takeover. Uncharacteristically, I stormed into the office next door and attempted to set the record straight. Before giving them a chance to speak, I stormed out of the office.
By the time I reached the parking lot, I was crying. As I started my 3 hour drive back to home, I didn’t turn on the radio or a Podcast. I just asked “Why?”
About an hour into the drive, it started to storm heavily. As I was doing 55 in the fast lane, I felt more trapped than I had ever felt before. I had a concrete barrier on my left, a semi truck on my right, and little ability to see through the rain outside of the car and my own tears inside of it.
I remember praying out loud, “God, I can’t do this anymore. Please open another door.”
I had applied for only one job. I had sent the application in about four weeks earlier. It’s not like I had given God a lot of help in helping me.
Ten minutes after my prayer, my phone rang. It was the HR Director for the company wanting to know if I could come in for skills testing. It was the first time in my life where I truly felt God was beside me, but I had no doubt where my next move was being directed.
The hiring process, however, was slow. It gave me plenty of time for me to doubt if I should leave. About two weeks before I had my final interview at the new company, God showed me another door closing.
The HR Director at my current company walked into my office and told me they had replaced my position. I now reported to the new Director of Marketing and needed to schedule my first meeting with her.
I was crushed. I had asked for it. But I didn’t even know they were actually looking. I felt like the mentor and father figure I had found was stolen. I now had a boss over a department I had poured three years of my heart and soul into, telling me what to do.
But God is good.
God knew it was time for me to move on. He had another purpose for me that I couldn’t yet see. He needed to make sure I knew it was time to close the door. He also needed to make sure the good and faithful servant he had in my now former boss had someone to take over the reins.
In the hurt of being replaced and the happiness of getting the new job offer a few weeks later, I recognized God’s timing and wisdom is always on point, even in the tough moments. I let go of any ounce of anger I had towards my dad dying, and I started my next journey.
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s reflection of how doors open and close in our careers…
Photo: A picture of my daughter and me in my office while I worked at the company mentioned.