On the Other Side of a "Career"

It has been 5 months since I “officially” stopped working, which means I no longer leave the house in the morning to go to another location to work. I now go to my home office and write and study the craft of writing.
I have spent the last 11 years in the enviable position of being an executive secretary to a pastor of a large church. It was an honor to serve him and his wife for so many years. I now sit in my seat at church and drink in the wisdom of this Godly man without having to be alert to his needs or the needs of the congregation around me. Not that I don’t care about those things but he has a new assistant who is filling those needs.
God takes us through seasons in our lives, transition is not always easy. I am no longer the “go to” person for answers about what is going on at the church. Someone asked me this morning where our Prayer Coordinator person was and I told her I did not know. This person then asked, “aren’t you in the know anymore”, to which I replied, “nope.” At first I missed knowing everything before others but that has passed.
We can let our identity get wrapped up in our title and what we “do” and if we stop “doing” or lose our title, then we think we are nothing and of no worth. We are valuable in God’s sight whether we are a great evangelist, a mother, a waitress, a lawyer, or a clerk. When we are secure in the knowledge that we are beloved children of God it doesn’t matter what we are “doing.” The world has a different standard of success: title, money, honor. Success in God’s eyes is being obedient to the call he has put on your life. He has called me to use words to touch people’s lives. The scripture in Luke where Jesus goes into the temple and reads from Isaiah has been a hook in me for years. Luke 4:18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.” What is so awesome is that all of the above can be accomplished with written words. We all have been in that place where we desperately needed to hear from God or needed a word of comfort and have picked up our Bible, a book or magazine and there on the page was a message just for us.
So, right now, in the world’s eyes I don’t have much value but in God’s eyes I am exactly where he wants me, at His feet, learning how to put forth words that will set the captives free.