I'm Turning My Face Back Now

“Ten years ago...I turned my face for a moment, and it became my life.”

Someone shared this quote with me earlier this week. It’s from David Whyte’s work called ‘The Heart Aroused”, and was a quote from a woman who was addressing the group in one of his seminars.

It has shaken me to my core this week, as it so succinctly puts words to the course of my life the last few years. I’ve been far too unhappy and ill-fitted in my current job for way too long. My friends have patiently waited and prayed and loved me while I worked through coming to terms with this and finally admitting out loud to myself and others that something had to change.

In my mind, I have a series of mental photographs of moments and acts of grace along the way... more than one well-timed email, conversation, prayer, and act of kindness. They have kept me going the last few months.

It still feels risky, but I’m in the process of making the shift now. I’ll still be working for the same company, but in a different capacity. I am trading in my management hat in favor of learning a different part of the business. I could not be happier. Yet I still struggle with feeling like my job got the best of me.

I turned my face for a moment, and it became my life.

In many ways, it did get the best of me. It got all of me. It used me up and depleted my reserves. The logistics of the transition are in the works, and have required me to exhibit more patience than I really care to. I’ve come to understand the waiting of Advent in a new way.

On the second Sunday of Advent, my friend Nadia said in her sermon, “Maybe when our opinions and neurosis and pride and expectations about what the world owes us die down…maybe when we sit in this quiet of Advent we might begin to see where God is quietly and insistently making all things new.”

I turned my face for a moment, and it became my life.

I'm turning my face back now.

(photo by Sheralee Turley)