At the beginning of every year, I set goals and resolutions for what I hope to achieve. In 2025, I set out to focus on building my business and set my word for the year to be Faith. Faith in prayers unanswered and to grow deeper in my faith with the Lord.  No where on my 2025 list of goals did, I add look for a new job. We were three weeks into the new year, when I and many other global citizens found ourselves negatively impacted by one of the numerous executive orders that President Trump has issued over the past two months.  I currently work for an INGO that found a sizeable portion of their annual budget cut due to the loss of US funding. To remain solvent, many organizations have had to lay off staff, furlough staff, or cut back on hours. My current full-time position has been slashed to a part-time position with hopes that it will change soon.

            As I’ve grappled with a world that feels lost, I have also lost my livelihood and for the first time in over a decade, I have only one job. I have cried more over the past two months than at every other point in my life. The past two months have felt like everything that I relied on, praised myself for, or used as a distraction has been removed from me. Relationships, jobs, money, it has all been stripped. What does that leave me with? The very thing that I asked for : faith.

            I do not know what the future holds. None of us do. But I do know what I have overcome in the past, and I do know that in this present moment I have never felt more like I am exactly where I need to be. The truth is I can weather this storm. During the times when I had a bit more money in my account, I shopped a lot. Now I don’t need much clothes, or accessories. I have had to pause my monthly facials and my monthly manicures. It has forced me to be aware of my spending, and it has forced me to be creative with what I do have.

            I also know that sometimes you must lose things to gain others. Working part time has allowed me the opportunity to explore, to rest, to write, to live a life less on someone else’s terms and more on my own. My heart breaks for the treatment of our most vulnerable communities. This administration’s cut in humanitarian aid will not only have severe and deadly consequences around the world, but the loss of employment for many people will be devastating. I do not want to sugarcoat or downplay the loss that has been felt over the past two months, but what if you needed to lose some things to make room for others? What if all the loss we are experiencing is pushing us to become the very people we were always meant to be? What if we are the ones we’ve been waiting for?

            I believe that there is a lesson to be found in every storm. If you find yourself in a place that you did not anticipate or expect, I would ask you to stop for just a moment. It might be uncomfortable, and it might hurt, but if you stopped what is this moment trying to teach you? When you come out on the other side, what will you know that you don’t know now? Who will you be once this storm has passed?  The truth is you will be exactly who you need to be. Scars and all.