Josh’s Story
My story is one comprised of career disappointment, loneliness and depression, trust in God, and a joy I'd never known.
In 2014, I was working as a phone rep at a large online retailer. This company would promote seasonally in large volumes to accommodate the large number of seasonal employees hired. If you were promoted seasonally, you had a way better chance at a permanent promotion.
Prior to that year, I’d been a customer service trainer for 3 busy seasons and kept applying for that permanent promotion and being denied. I was frustrated. I was wondering if my lot in life was to be a phone rep – there were no better jobs in the area. A supervisor suggested for the 2014 season that I apply to be a seasonal supervisor and not a seasonal trainer. I didn’t want to do it, but I did.
During my seasonal supervisor stint, the company needed someone from our building who was certified as a trainer but who was not currently in a training role to go across the country to Arizona to help open a third party call center. I was the only one in the building who met those specific qualifications, so I went.
God had uniquely positioned me for this opportunity after years of saying ”no” to my desire for the promotion I wanted.
While in Arizona, I took a job with the third party company. I moved 2000 miles from home. I was lonely and depressed. I made no real effort to make friends or get connected to a church community.
But finally God got a hold of my heart and placed me into a bilingual church, which was a little out of my comfort zone. I was also trying really hard to start a relationship via online dating. I probably had 5 dating apps on my phone at once. I was trying so hard. But nothing ever came of it.
Finally I laid it down and began to have contentment in my singleness – I was resting in the idea that God would introduce me to the right person or that his plans were for me to be single.
A week after I made the decision to stop trying so hard on the dating front, God moved me to go to a church family Labor Day retreat in Sedona. I almost didn’t go because I was a single guy who would be hanging out with lots of young families I didn’t know, and that might come off as creepy. But he reminded me it was a chance to connect with and get to know my church community and so I went.
A woman saw me sitting by myself and began to talk with me out of kindness. I wanted to keep talking to her. I took every opportunity through the weekend to talk to her, and I knew I wanted to ask her out. I asked her on a hiking date, without explicitly calling it that, via Instagram of all places. We went hiking and due to wildfires blocking the route back home, our first date wound up being about 17 hours from when I picked her up to when I dropped her off at home. We talked the whole time and weren’t tired of each other.
After years of disappointment from not getting a promotion and years of loneliness, God gave me a beautiful wife and daughter. We've been married for two and a half years and our daughter is one and a half.
Throughout all this, God has shown me that his ways are so much greater than mine and his plans are so much more than I could ever dream.
He's continuing to show it to me as well, and it's getting easier to trust him. Since getting married, God gave me a very well-paying job and took it away, and has presented me with an opportunity to be a stay-at-home dad. As I search for my purpose, beyond the obvious one of training up my daughter,