I Quit The Safe Job

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I did not resign into a plan that was already working. I resigned into uncertainty, into a business I already had but had not yet fully stepped into, into family commitments that required more of my availability than a principal's schedule would ever allow. Success did not arrive the moment I turned in my resignation. It has been a long, wearisome process since, some good days, plenty of hard ones, and I want to be honest that I did not always feel like I had made the right decision, even after I had already made it.

There were nights I was inwardly frantic about whether we could cover basic monthly expenses. I remember lying awake doing math in my head that never quite balanced, running scenarios that all ended in some version of what if this was wrong. There were conversations with people who loved me, asking, gently or not so gently, why a woman with my credentials would walk away from stability on purpose. I did not always have a satisfying answer for them. I only had the certainty that giving up was not actually available to me once I understood what I had been asked to do.

I remember one conversation in particular, with a family member who meant well, who sat across from me at a kitchen table and asked, plainly, whether I understood what I was giving up. I did understand. That was, in some ways, the hardest part. I was not confused about the cost. I simply believed the cost was already being paid either way, and staying would have cost me something I was less willing to lose than the paycheck.

I have thought often about the Apostle Paul's words, at my first answer no man stood with me, notwithstanding the Lord stood with me and strengthened me. There is a particular kind of lonely that comes with a faith decision other people cannot verify from the outside. No one can see the instruction you received. They can only see the paycheck you walked away from, the title you gave up, the security everyone assumed you would have been foolish to release.

Being totally reliant on God's provision and timing is a faith walk, not a single moment of bravery. It is a daily, ongoing commitment to seek Him again for strength, because yesterday's certainty rarely covers today's fear.

I still have to remind myself of that regularly. Obedience did not make the uncertainty disappear. It just made the uncertainty mean something. There were entire seasons after that resignation where I questioned whether I had heard correctly, where the business grew slower than I needed it to, where I wondered if I had mistaken my own restlessness for divine instruction. I do not think doubt disqualifies obedience. I think doubt is simply part of what obedience actually feels like from the inside, far more often than the confident, resolved version of faith usually gets portrayed as.

If you are sitting on a decision that looks irresponsible to everyone watching but feels unavoidable to you privately, I want you to know the discomfort you are feeling is not evidence that you misheard. Sometimes it is simply evidence that you are choosing the harder, truer thing over the safer, more explainable one, and those two things rarely feel the same in the moment you are choosing between them. The safer option will almost always make more sense on paper. That has never once been proof that it was the right one to choose.

I think about the version of myself who sat in that parking lot arguing with the certainty, and I have real compassion for her now that I did not have in the moment. She was not being dramatic. She was doing the responsible thing, weighing a decision that would affect her family, her finances, her entire professional identity, against a conviction she could not fully prove to anyone else, including herself some days. I do not think faith erases that weighing. I think it simply asks you to make the decision anyway, with the weighing still fully present, rather than waiting for the weighing to resolve into false certainty before you move.

There is a particular myth about obedience that I had to unlearn during that season, the myth that hearing clearly should feel like relief, like a door swinging open easily once you finally agree to walk through it. My experience was closer to the opposite. The clarity came first, sharp and undeniable. The relief, what little of it arrived, came much later, sometimes years later, in small increments I almost missed because I had been expecting one large wave of confirmation instead.

I remember the specific moment, nearly two years after resigning, when I finally exhaled about the decision, not because everything had resolved, but because I had simply lived long enough inside the consequences to know I could survive them. That exhale did not come from proof that I had chosen correctly. It came from the accumulated evidence of still standing, still functioning, still building, long after the fear had promised I would not be able to. Obedience, I have learned, rarely proves itself quickly. It proves itself slowly, through your own continued presence in the life it asked you to build.

I do not think I would give the same advice to every person in every circumstance, and I want to be careful not to romanticize risk for its own sake. Some safe jobs genuinely are the right season to stay in. What made mine different was not the category of decision. It was the specific, persistent clarity that would not release me, the kind that outlasted every practical argument I built against it, week after week, until arguing against it finally became more exhausting than simply obeying it.

-- Dr. Rhonda

The Next Step: If you are weighing a decision that looks irresponsible on paper but feels unavoidable underneath, take The Close the Leadership Gap Diagnostic™. It is built to help you name what you are actually choosing between, so the decision gets clearer even if it never gets easier.