Part Four - God’s Word is Powerful
I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts: English Literature degree in 2010, and decided to go back to school in 2012 for a graphic design degree. Before devoting all my free time to softball during middle school, I had loved to create art. I carried a piece of that love to college and took notes for my classes with crayons, so I could make them pretty. I decided to go back to school and embrace my love for art. I set my sights on my next goal, to become a graphic designer for a church.
I graduated and got married in 2014. In the fall of 2015, I began working as an assistant in the media department of a large church in Omaha. They already had a graphic designer, but they let me use my new skills to layout the bulletin and do simple design projects. In July of 2016, God gave us our son, and six weeks later the current graphic designer took a different job.
Soon after, the graphic design position became mine. God had bigger things to teach me than designing. While I was there, the Discipleship Pastor offered me a chance to take the biblical counseling course. I asked my husband and he agreed to watch our son so I could attend the 8 days of training spread out over 4 months.
The first night of the training our instructor read the great commission to us, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19–20). He followed that with the question, “What are Jesus’s commands?” I froze in my seat and fervently prayed that he wouldn’t call on me because I didn’t know for sure. Even though I had read the Bible cover to cover a few times, I realized I had never studied it well. I finished that course and God grew a desire in me to know His Word on a deeper level.
By the summer of 2022, we now had two kids, and moved over an hour away from the church I worked at, because Covid shut everything down and I could work from home. When I was asked to be in the office more, I made the decision to leave and stay home with our kids until our youngest began preschool. God’s plans differed slightly from mine. The fall before she would begin preschool I found out I was pregnant with our third child.
Leaving my dream job was bittersweet. I wasn’t excited to raise my kids, but I missed my work friends and designing full time. God always had a plan for me and He has used this time at home with the kids to grow my knowledge of His Word.
Read part 5 to see what I’ve learned.
