Rachel* was struggling.
Political conflicts within her marketing job and a new boss wanting to find his own people led to her losing her job. But unemployment became the start of an unexpected journey, as she grew closer to God and developed a powerful witness to other women in the marketplace.
“At that time I just wanted to make more money,” Rachel says. “I thought pride wasn’t really that bad. But God showed me how I thought I deserved everything, like a better wage because of my background and my experience.”
When she left her job, Rachel’s first reaction was to look to other people for solutions. It felt too easy to be influenced by what other people were saying to her. Someone even told Rachel she needed a particular type of job to be happy.
God closed doors for her in that even when she got interviews, she wasn’t being offered jobs.
“Other people were trying to help me find a job but it wasn’t happening,” says Rachel. “So instead I told God I wanted to look to Him first.”
She started journaling and realized she had drifted from the Lord. God showed her she needed to change the direction of her life.
“I took part in Leader Impact’s School of Leadership where I heard a speaker talk about making prayer and reading the Bible every day part of your action plan,” Rachel says.
She learned about living out her faith in the marketplace. She was convicted about the willingness she previously had to compromise some of her beliefs at work. The lessons she learned through Leader Impact became like a GPS for God to show her she was on the right path.
Rachel now believes being laid off from her job was part of God’s plan to eventually bring her back into the workplace with a transformed perspective. God has used her period of unemployment to influence other women.
“I have friends who are not believers and I can tell they are really searching for something,” she says. “Most of my friends are very rational and they try to make sense of things in their own way. But they noticed the change in me and wondered how, even though I have been out of work for nine months, the whole experience seems to have been worth it.”
Rachel prays through a list of these friends daily. She has introduced some of them to a course called “Christianity Explored.”
As she thinks about potential future jobs, Rachel is focussed on what she can contribute and how she can serve.
“I want to be a giver and not a taker,” she says. “Before I just thought about me.”
*Name changed for security reasons
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