I’ve made a significant change in my life recently.  After eight years of praying over it, spending a lot of time and energy on it, building it into a successful business and ministry, I have closed the doors on my Thirty-One Gifts business.  Whew!  What a big transition for me as well as for my family!

Why did I make this decision?  That is a simple answer: because Jesus asked me to.  He has asked me to make ministry in His name my job.  I made this decision prayerfully, deliberately and happily.  How?  Well that is a story for another day.  Let me just say, for now, I chose to be obedient because I want what comes from that, His perfect peace.  Right now I’d rather share what it has been like since I made this decision.

I didn’t feel regret, doubt, guilt or fear.  Thank you, Jesus!  I didn’t even feel sad.  What I felt was grief.  Whoa, I did not see that coming!  To be honest, I didn’t even realize you could feel grief without any of those other feelings.  I wasn’t even sure “grief” was the right noun actually.  It is just that I didn’t know what else I should call it.

Then one day I heard someone on a podcast reading Genesis 2:2-3: “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done”.  The speaker went on to note that the verses don’t mention God being tired.  Boom!  Something clicked in me.  I was saying goodbye or closing a door to a season of my life, a similar process to grieving.  No, I wasn’t exhausted and tired of that season.  Although, I was exhausted and tired of doing something good that had eventually become not what was best.  No, I didn’t regret that season at all.  No, I wasn’t upset about the season coming to a close or mad at God for “having” to do this.  Rather, this last month has been my version of the seventh day.  I looked back and saw that all I’d done with the Lord and for the Lord, even sometimes without Him and not for Him, was good.  Now was my time to rest and appreciate the blessing the last eight years had been.

I now feel ready to take that next step on His path for me.  Hopefully I will more readily recognize the bench of rest along the way and pause to appreciate all He has done in me, for me and through me.  I pray that you take time to rest and see all that has been good in your life so that you can then get up and continue on a path of perfect peace with the One who loves you most.