How to Handle Losing Your Dream Job

A while ago, God made a deep desire of my heart come true...

Have you ever hung up the phone and then danced excitedly around the room like a little kid?  I remember doing this after a particular phone call, which came a few days after a big job interview.  The bosses on the other end didn’t waste time—they wanted me to join their school. I managed to act professional until I hung up, and then the cavorting began.

Because this wasn’t just any job. This was my DREAM job. You know the one I mean. The one that’s too good to be true. The one that would take years to arrange. The one that might not even exist yet. Two years ago, my life fell so perfectly together that it just couldn’t be coincidence.

My dream job, the first of its kind, opened up! The job was service-oriented, played to my strengths, and was even at a Catholic school. And now I had gotten it! I finally felt like this is where God wanted me. This was His plan for my career. Right?

Right?!

But then, unexpectedly, I had to leave my dream job. Did God not want me to be happy?

I was right about one thing. It really was the most wonderful job in the world. I wanted to keep it so much that I brushed aside my worsening health until it was too dangerous to ignore. Three months into my dream job, bam. I had to either resign, or die right there in the school.

I want to say I handled quitting with grace and poise. Really, I spent most of that time crying on my bed, which I was too sick to leave anyway. I had dreamed so big and set my heart on this job, because I truly believed that was where God wanted me to be. I had thought I had aligned my heart with God’s will. But in doing so, I had selfishly assumed that I would get what I wanted. Instead of actually surrendering to Him, I had given everything to the idea of “serving God = this dream job.”

Through this experience, I learned three major lessons.

I learned three major lessons from this:

1. Dreams actually do come true!

God plans to make you incredibly happy, even in your work, if you let him. I got my dream job, remember? I might never know why it lasted only three months. But I do know that if God had left me there, I would have missed out on many other things He wanted me to learn. God wants us to continually grow, and growing means you often get too tall for the space you’re in. Think of it like a tree in a pot. If you leave it there it will get stunted, like a Bonzai. If the tree is to reach its fullest height, you have to take it out of the pot and plant it somewhere else, so it can grow up and bear fruit. We will be uprooted and moved, too, so we can bear fruit for the Kingdom.

2. Work is not where we should put our identity.

I made that mistake, and I know a lot of my generation does too. We equate our worth with what we can do, not Whose we are. And that mistake leads us to be focused on all the wrong things, even if we think we’re focused on God. Which leads me to number three...

3. Nothing in our earthly lives is permanent.

Tying your happiness to an earthly thing or job or place or person, no matter how meaningful or Christ-centered it seems, still puts that thing in place of Jesus. Only He can fulfill the longing in our hearts for permanent happiness. Don’t let anything else shoulder Him out of the way.

So, how do you move on after losing something so important to you?

You wait, because it takes time to think about it and decide what to do next. You look for different opportunities, because there will be other good jobs and more meaningful work out there. Most of all, you will have to accept that God has a plan, and maybe it wasn't that job after all. He has it figured out, and all we have to do is trust Him.