I Quit My Editing Job, Pt. 2

Or, bad theology I believed for way too long.

Oct 19, 2024

Last week I wrote about ending my work as a freelance editor. That post told you what I was walking away from and how I decided it was time to go. This one is about why I stayed as long as I did.

I wrote last week about the circuitous route I took in deciding to walk away from my editing business. It took six years of feeling unsettled before I finally made a change. Even though that sounds (and felt) like a really long time to stay in a job that wasn’t working for me anymore, I think the first four years were necessary. They were a time of preparation so that I would be ready to make this massive change when the time came without feeling like I was making a snap decision.

So what about the last two years? Well, there were a few theological missteps keeping me tethered to my editing work two years beyond when God invited me to step away.

I had begged God to make this freelance editing idea work out twelve years ago when I first started. We were newlyweds getting by mostly on my husband’s salary while I worked part-time as a barista and spent my off hours applying and being rejected for in-house editing positions. When freelancing actually started to work out, it was literally an answered prayer. To admit that I didn’t want to edit anymore—that I didn’t even enjoy it—seemed ungrateful.

Lie #1: If God gives you something you asked for, you’d better hold onto that gift for dear life.

Even in the beginning I didn’t love editing, but I was good at it. Clients kept returning with more work for me, which is often the only form of feedback freelancers get. Slowly but surely my little business grew. As recently as this calendar year, some trusted spiritual people who heard me wrestling with my career options told me that because I was gifted at editing, I probably wasn’t being called to walk away from it.

Lie #2: If you’re good at something, God must want you to do it forever.

Freelance work tends to be “feast or famine,” meaning that sometimes there’s too much work and other times there’s not enough of it. When you do this type of work long enough, you get a feel for the cycles and learn to smooth out your budget over time. But every now and then, there would be enough of a gap between work or enough unexpected household expenses that I would get nervous. And every single time, God came through with enough work to get us through a tight financial month. Even though the work was unfulfilling and draining, it was part of how God provided for us.

Lie #3: God doesn’t care if you like your work. Just be grateful that you have enough.

And then of course, there’s the part where I was just plain stubborn and prideful, with no bad theology to put any blame on.

What I haven’t mentioned yet is that I’ve had a second part-time job since the summer of 2022. That’s when my husband bought his family’s business and became a third-generation owner of a company that’s been going eighty years strong.

He needed help with the bookkeeping, which I knew enough about from doing my own business books over the years. And the marketing, which I’m likewise familiar with. And drafting bids, estimates, contracts, and emails, which hello, I’m a writer. And the HR, which I didn’t know a dang thing about but loved researching. Oh, and collecting and analyzing data to plan for operations strategy and make projects run more efficiently.

I didn’t actually have time to do this work for my husband’s company, but I did it because a) it meant he could be home more often and b) my favorite part of freelancing was the part most editors hate: running the actual business.

The most fulfilled I’ve ever been in my editing career was during the first year when I got to experience the thrill of researching and figuring out things like which accounting software I wanted to use and what sort of business entity made the most sense for me. Once my business was established, I still nerded out over changes in tax laws and SEO, but mostly I was just left with the drudgery of the editing I was actually getting paid to do.

My husband has gently suggested many times in the last two years that maybe I’d like to step away from editing and expand the work I’m doing for him. And every time, I bristled, hackles up like a dog that’s been backed into a corner.

I enjoyed being able to say I had my own business that I’d built entirely myself, that I was the reason we could take this vacation or buy that new couch. To walk away from that so that I could do administrative work for my husband’s business honestly poked at my feminist side. Never mind that I would be helping make business decisions on a much larger scale for a much bigger company; my concern was that I could no longer say that I ran my business. Now I would have to over-explain my role to make it clear that no, I am not my husband’s secretary.

I clung to the idea that I had sacrificed so much already for my kids and our family. Why should I have to give up my career to help my husband’s? I was so mired in pride that I never once considered that my mental health and my enjoyment of my work would actually improve if I made this change. I dismissed the idea without thinking it through.

Lie #4: Doing the best thing for my family automatically means doing the worst thing for myself.

At the heart of it all, I had a deep misunderstanding about who God is and who I am as his creation.

Several years ago, I would never have thought that God cared about whether or not I was happy with my work. The God I knew back then was stern and judgmental. He looked at my inability to do it all as a colossal failure. He had given me all these good things—the dream job I’d asked for, the four kids I loved—and I was dropping all the balls he’d handed me. I was nothing more than wasted potential that should’ve tried harder.

I didn’t have any concept of a God who cared about what I wanted—and certainly not one who would call me beloved. That’s a God I was introduced to by the many wise, caring professors and peers in my spiritual direction program.

Now that I’ve met that God, the one who’s always been there, I know that of course I don’t have to keep doing a job I don’t enjoy! Not just because I’m good at it, not just because it’s provided for our family, not for any reason at all. Not only do we have freedom in our free will, but God cares about our dreams and desires!

I finally listened when God told me that I was needed elsewhere. With my kids. Out in nature. At home, where I would have the space to be an actual person again. And yes, supporting my husband in his business rather than running my own.

It brought me more fulfillment, flexibility, and joy than I’ve had in years.

These two posts have been a story of discernment and letting go. Discernment isn’t easy or linear. My story won’t look like yours—it won’t even look like mine the next time I have a new discernment question to consider. But doing this work—paying attention and listening and taking small steps in faith—is so good. Even as you sit here, not entirely sure of what happens next.

Walk the winding road. Make what feels like a million mistakes. Then look back one day and realize that the twisting, bumpy road was doing good work in you.

Let It Go

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