Splitting in Two

CHOOSING BETWEEN GOD AND GOLD

What do you do when you start getting pulled in multiple directions in life? You choose a path. That’s what happened to me when I was a sophomore at UW-Stout. I was a Hospitality Management major in my second year, and I thought I had it all figured out. I was following God, I had great friends, and I was vice president of one of the clubs for my major. Then I started to feel the pull in both directions. My major kept asking more from me: more site visits and after-class activities, more career fairs, more connections, more time. Simultaneously, God was standing there watching and waiting for me to give Him the time of day that He deserved. Following Jesus meant full involvement in Street Level and church. But I just kept pushing off the feeling of guilt that God didn’t have my whole life. My thought process was that I could use my career for God, but I was going to do it my way.   

I started splitting the difference, racing from hospitality events to church events one after another. I specifically remember literally running down the street in my heels after the Hospitality Mixer I had helped plan and run. By leaving the event early and arriving late to campus church, I was giving half of myself everywhere.   

Then, a site visit came up in one of my classes. It was out of class hours and on a Monday, but I assumed I could make it work and still go to Street Level’s Bible study that night because I always made it work. Then I found out that the site visit was going to be the exact same time. I emailed my professor asking if I could back out completely, or stay for the educational pieces and leave before dinner. That led to a series of emails back and forth as we tried to come up with some sort of plan. But the words that I can still see in my mind are: “You have to take a larger view on what this would demonstrate.” This made me think long and hard. Who was I going to be for Christ? Was I going to conform to the expectations of a career, or was I going to follow God to the very end, no matter what other people thought of me?  

In that moment, I probably made the wrong decision. I went to that site visit, and when I showed up late to the Street Level event, dressed in my business attire, out of breath, and having driven from a country club in the cities to be there, I was confronted with the reality that something had to change, and I wasn’t going to like my options. When the next site visit rolled around, my professor announced that it would be on a Monday night again. I immediately emailed him to say I would not be attending and that I would complete any necessary makeup assignment. He agreed, and I started working on my book presentation, which was a bit of extra work I didn’t have time for, but I knew it was worth it to be at Street Level.   

I ran into my professor in the hallway the following day before class. He asked me, “How was the hospitality event on Monday night?” Apparently, there was another hospitality event on Monday night, and he had assumed I attended it, which was why I missed the site visit. Very awkwardly, I explained to him that I missed it for a Bible study. He looked at me for a solid 30 seconds and said, “This has never happened before,” and walked away into class. I followed behind him into the same class, and as I sat there listening to his lecture, I questioned everything.   

It was only my second year in college, and I already didn’t have time for God. Sure, I could miss out on extra class activities and pull back from extracurriculars for my major, but how long would that last? At that moment, I heard God clearly tell me I had to give it up. The career I had longed for and been told that I would become someone big in. The thing that I had a strong passion for, I was going to have to let go of it. But where would I go after? I had never not known what I was going to do with my life. 

That’s when I realized that God had been planning this change for me way before I had thought of it. Months earlier, my pastor’s wife had randomly set me up with a marketing contract job with a co-worker of hers. I had zero experience, but she hired me, and I actually loved learning how to do marketing. After giving thanks to God for setting me up for the perfect transition, I scheduled a meeting with the Digital Marketing and Technologies advisor. I explained the situation to her and the professor I had been talking to because he happened to also be my hospitality advisor. That was a tough conversation, by the way.   

But I did it. I switched to this major where I knew absolutely nothing except for the fact that God was going to give me the strength and comfort to get through it. Now that I am in my new major, I am absolutely loving being pushed outside my comfort zone and learning new things. I also just started pursuing a minor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, so I can open my own marketing business, set my own hours, and be more flexible to do whatever God wants me to do. I won’t make as much as I would’ve in the Hospitality industry, but I will be with God, and that is so worth it. Sometimes you have to give up your search for the gold to find the true treasure that is fully committing yourself to a life with God.