My story . . . Part 7 of several

Oh, no. I made a big-time rookie blogger mistake. I announced in advance that I would give one more episode of my story. I didn’t realize that it will really take a couple of more entries to get you up to speed on where my life is right now. So please forgive me, and I am so thankful for your indulgence, and for the kind comments that I have received from you so far. I shall continue now.

Back in 2000, if you had asked me where I was heading—where I saw myself in ten years—I would not have been able to give a very clear answer. My career in the Navy was promising, and I liked the idea of serving my country. So, I guess I would have said that I would stay in the Navy, see the world, get promoted as high as possible, and then retire from active duty in my mid-forties. Beyond that, I had no real ambition, no real clue as to what I wanted to do—no real passion.

But in 2002 and 2003, in the first few years after Matthew’s birth, three things occurred in my life that changed this outlook dramatically.

The first was my job. Do you remember that when we got pregnant with Matthew back in 2000, we did not move to England, but rather, I was assigned to a job in Virginia Beach? Well, even though I enjoyed that new assignment, it was not considered particularly “career enhancing.” In 2002, I experienced something I never thought I would—I failed to promote to the rank of Commander. Now, within the culture of the Navy, this was a significant blow. It was humiliating, embarrassing, and left me very lonely at work. For months, I felt as though I needed to yell out, “Unclean! Unclean!” before entering someone’s office. Seriously, within my community in the Navy, a “failure to promote” often leaves one ostracized, and is the kiss of death for one’s career progression.

Again, though, God was very gracious to me, and I did eventually make the promotion two years later. But by that point, I knew that I would be riding out the remainder of a twenty-year Navy career, and that I would be entering a new phase in life. This caused me to think long and hard about what I was going to do with the rest of my life. What career should I pursue after my days in the Navy were over? And, did Hebrews 11:1 have anything to do with all this?

On the one hand, I thought, I could probably slide out of the Navy, get a good job in the defense sector, make good money, and live comfortably for the rest of my life. But over time, a question kept coming to my mind: That’s all well and good, but, what is my passion? I was, and am, very happy to have served my country in the Navy, but I can’t say that it was my passion, the thing that I was “born to do.” Was there something out there that I loved so much that I just had to do it for the rest of my life?

So, as I watched my Navy career begin to fizzle, I also came to the depressing realization that I had no real passion for what I wanted to do in life. I remember a brief phase when I daydreamed about becoming “independently wealthy” enough to quit all work by my mid-50s, and just do nothing for the rest of my life. I had no passion.

This was one of those points where I began to replay the whole experience of Matthew’s birth in my mind. God had done amazing things. He really is there. I really can have faith in him. So, this was a time when I put Hebrews 11:1 to the test. I started to pray that God would help me to see what I should do with my life, what career I should pursue. And I prayed that I would be able to accept it and do what God wanted. What happened next surprised me as much as anything else in this whole saga.