How I Followed a Holy Nudge—and Found the Work I Was Made for Next
Tomorrow marks my third business anniversary—but that’s not where the story begins. The real story started long before I ever chose a name or filed paperwork.
It started in grief.
In questions I couldn’t answer.
In a journal entry I didn’t expect.
And maybe that’s how many beginnings start: not with a plan, but with a whisper. A holy nudge.
In this blog, I want to share a part of that journey—not because the details are extraordinary, but because I think there’s something in the unfolding that might matter to you, too.
August 2019
I escaped my life for a five-day private retreat—a much-needed pause for healing and discernment.
2018 had been brutal. Losses stacked on top of losses. Personally, professionally, emotionally. And while 2019 brought a bit more stability personally, I was still reeling from the aftershocks. And professionally, well, that chaos was only growing.
I knew I needed God to do something with the ache in my chest and the noise in my soul.
After some moments of healing around my personal grief, my focus shifted to vocational discernment. I was wrestling with whether I could keep going in my ministry role. I wasn’t feeling called to something else—but staying felt harder and harder. Less life-giving. More soul-draining.
On day four of the retreat, my spiritual director gave me some prompts to pray with. I tried. Really. But my mind and heart felt scattered and restless.
So instead, I began to journal whatever came up. A list of longings, maybe. Random thoughts. Buried desires.
About five items in, this spilled out onto the page:
“I want to direct and manage a spirituality center where I’ll teach about leadership and spirituality.”
And the second I put the period at the end of that sentence, I thought, What? I don’t even know what that means.
And yet—
Something in me ignited.
My journal captured it best:
“I feel tingly and excited thinking about a new job—not just a new job… a particular vocational turn. My heart is burning as I think about this.”
I kept writing, letting the vision unfold.
Helping people deepen their spiritual lives.
Combining tools like CliftonStrengths and the Enneagram with leadership training, creativity, prayer, and purpose.
Teaching. Presenting. Learning. Growing.
Helping others connect their inner life to the way they live and lead.
I didn’t see a physical place when I imagined this “center.” It wasn’t about a building. It was something else. A way of working. A way of being.
“God, what are you creating in me?” I wrote. “Is this daydream of you?”
After some time with these new thoughts and feelings, I returned to the prompts from my spiritual director. I processed what I was feeling about my current work. I thought and prayed deeply about my journey in ministry, how I got to where I was, what I loved about the work – and what was draining.
That night, sitting alone in a dark chapel, I looked up at the crucifix and wrote:
“Lord, right now, this work feels more and more like a cross than a gift. But if it’s your desire, I will continue to carry this cross—even if I feel like I’m being nailed to it.”
And then, just a few lines later:
“Lord, if you want me to take up new work, please make that clear to me.”
March 2020
As COVID swept in and ministry life shifted again, I got the call.
Our division was being eliminated. I was losing my job.
Well, that’s pretty clear, God.
Sure, there was grief and anger and sadness. But there was another feeling too – one that surprised me: freedom.
In a journal entry dated April 3, 2020—the day after I turned in my things—I wrote:
“Today is a new beginning. Yes, it’s an ending too, but I feel filled with joy, expectation, and hope for what is to come, for what I am free to choose, to explore, to dream, to do… I don’t know that I’ve ever felt true freedom before.”
The In-Between
So much happened between that moment and now.
There was grief. Growth. Learning. Leaping.
There have been seasons of stretching, doubting, and slowly becoming.
And over time, I could look back and see what I couldn’t see then.
September 2024
At a retreat with some coaching colleagues, we were reflecting on the creation story in Genesis—and on the stories we tell ourselves.
As I revisited my own story, especially that surprising journal entry from 2019, I sensed God saying something tender but powerful:
“I pruned you.
I pruned you for a reason.
I pruned you for a purpose.
I pruned you to bear greater fruit.
You were not in Eden (delight).
I saved you, and planted you in delight so that you can bring Eden to others.”
And that’s when it hit me:
That “center” I dreamed about?
It’s this.
This business. This way of serving. This way of integrating spirituality and leadership, soul and strategy. This calling to bring life and hope to others, and help them reconnect to their joy, purpose, and passion.
It’s not a building. And it’s more than just a business.
It’s a way of being in the world.
And So…
Here I am. Three years into business.
But nearly six years into the deeper beginning that started with a whisper.
I couldn’t have imagined what God was unfolding when I scribbled that journal entry.
But now, I see it:
Every unexpected turn was an invitation.
Every loss was the start of something being made new.
What about you?
What might be quietly beginning in your life right now—even if you can’t name it yet?
What have you been longing for… even if you don’t fully understand it?
What loss or letting go might be making space for something new to emerge?
What if the beginning you’re longing for has already begun?
Here’s to holy nudges.
To surprising clarity.
And to the slow, sacred unfolding of purpose.
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