Being me Jesus Voices in my head

The belly of the whale, part 1

The following story is true. I’m not a good enough writer to make this kind of stuff up.

I never bargained on being in the belly of the whale.

At that point, my life was pretty great. I was 24, working in my first job out of college and having a great time. I had a great mentor in my boss, a good working environment, an apartment I shared with my best friend from high school, and a great church family.

And yet – I had started getting the feeling, deep down in the places we rarely get quiet enough to examine, that the time had come to make a change. I thought I knew what God wanted me to do, but my life WAS pretty great. I didn’t really want to change things. And I was unsure about what was being required of me. If I left the job that I really liked, what would I do? When should I leave? Should I be applying for new jobs? Where? When? How? All kinds of questions assaulted me about the change I thought God was asking me to make. So, since I didn’t have answers, I tried as best I could to ignore the questions.

Until one Wednesday evening, I couldn’t ignore the questions anymore.

I had stayed late at the office, and everyone had already gone home by the time I finished my project around 6 p.m. I powered down my computer, and prepared to leave myself. My route home crossed not one, but two sets of railroad tracks, so I decided to visit the bathroom before heading home in case I got stopped by a train at either one of those crossings. I went into the bathroom, a big handicap-accessible room, and by force of habit locked the door handle behind me.

As I went to leave, the door handle moved uselessly in my hand. Nothing happened when I pressed it down. I was locked in the bathroom of my office. For 13 hours. And what happened in the course of those 13 hours would change me forever.

Stay tuned…

2 thoughts on “The belly of the whale, part 1”

Leave a Reply to Heather Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.