God Told Me To Do It

So, God told me to do it. 

What does that even mean???

To understand a little more, perhaps I should go back a bit. 

After pouring my heart and soul into my job and into a project that was ending, I found myself feeling very much down in the dumps. Sure, I had tried to convince myself that it was no big deal, but the truth of the matter was that I had wrapped so much of my identity around being a leader and manager of this project that it left me feeling lost. As an independent contractor in the oil and gas business, I had always known the risk of the industry—I could have a job one day and be jobless another. It is for this reason that I had always sought to go above and beyond that which was expected of me. I took pride in surpassing the benchmark of what was deemed as “good enough” and consistently sought out a new, higher mark of excellence to achieve.

As a team leader and project manager, I often put this same type of pressure onto my team. For if I could help my team achieve such excellence, we, in turn, would all have jobs. We could pay our bills. We could contribute financially to our families. We could contribute financially to worthy causes. We could afford to pay for health insurance. We could put money aside for retirement. We could set ourselves up for a rainy day. Furthermore, we could contribute to our industry by providing our clients with the very best of ourselves and delivering a product unsurpassed by others.

On the surface, there is really nothing wrong with that kind of thinking. In fact, it really served us well. Our team had consistently provided our client with quality products and workmanship. Our client and the broker for whom we worked were very much pleased with our efforts. All the hard work and dedication that we had put into this project was definitely appreciated and did not go unnoticed. Then when the “nature of the business took” effect, it left us with no new project to work. Through no fault of our own it left us with no work, no jobs, and no team. 

I’ve since been able to work through why this left me feeling so down and depressed, particularly after fifteen years of being in the industry: It was the very first time that I had felt responsible, in some way, for the demise of our team. Although I knew this to be false, I could not help but feel as such. We were like a family and had pulled together in so many instances to make this work, yet we were having to close this chapter and move on to other things. It hurt me deeply to say goodbye to our team—a team that I had helped to build and had gone through many trenches with. 

Have you ever been in a similar situation? With co-workers? With peers? With classmates? With family? With close friends?

I suspect we all have, at multiple points in our lives. Perhaps some situations were followed by sadness and longing of past kinships. Perhaps some were followed by a renewal of sorts. Perhaps others were followed by excitement of what was next to come. For me, grief ensued, followed by a feeling of unworthiness, which left me wondering, “Now what? What am I going to do next? Do I just move on? I love my job. I love the company I work with, but do I just move on and start over with a new broker? Sure, I've been successful and I've built a name for myself in this business, but am I really even cut out for this? What am I cut out for? Is this what I am meant to do in life? What am I meant to do? Is this my calling? My vocation? Am I living out my purpose? Am I living to my fullest potential?”

Deep inside I knew the answer to each of these questions. The one question to which I did not yet have the answer was whether or not I had the courage to be honest with myself and make a change. Only time would tell. Time, along with an unexpected tragedy, a choice to be vulnerable and introspective and, finally, a huge moment of inspiration, all of which would later lead me down a new path of discovery for my future self. 

*Why is courage important in making big life-changes? Thinking back on your life, have you been able to step into courage and produce fruitful outcomes? How so? What value did those experiences bring to your life and to the lives of others?