Acting sluggishly

When you receive promptings from the Spirit, you are advised, or counseled, if you will, to act immediately. We talked about acting immediately in Relief Society a few weeks ago. A lot of the conversation was about missing opportunities and not being able to serve others, which may be the case, but this is my testimony from not acting immediately.

Over the course of the last year, I have prayed about so many things. I have received promptings and have acted not immediately. I have pretended that I was acting on the promptings, but it wasn’t a full follow or trust in the Savior’s plan.

Most of my promptings have been about my work situation. It is not ideal, and the promptings I have received also seem not ideal to me. In November last year, a rhetorical question asked during a lesson and/or during General Conference was, “If you had more faith, what would you do?” The immediate thought that came to my mind was, I would quit my job. Afraid Cami then did not quit her job but transitioned merely to a PRN position (as needed). This way, scared Cami could still have work and provide for herself and her husband.

Fast forward to June of this year. Still hesitant Cami was working PRN. Every shift she picked up, she lost more and more hope in her job. She gave up on trying to provide well thought out groups. She struggled to have motivation to keep providing authentic and encouraging recreation therapy. So, she wrote a resignation letter and didn’t come back.

Yes, I did it very poorly. But every time I thought about coming in for next shift, I wanted to cry. And I did cry. I felt so horrible about the way that I left. I also cried at work thinking about how much I could no longer stand my job and the feeling that I had very minimal support. And that my coworkers that did encourage me were also giving up. They also felt defeated.

So I quit. Seven months after the prompting, I finally acted 100% to that prompting.

I've seen a few wonderful changes from acting 100%, including my mood and outlook on life. Last year, I started tracking my mood and occasionally stress levels regularly. Almost immediately after quitting in June, my mood was consistently higher. I was rarely tracking my mood as bad. Whereas before I quit, my mood was almost always tracked as bad. My stress improved. My mood improved. I am so much happier. That job was sucking the life out of me.

evidation.com

Another blessing that has come from acting 100% on the quitting my job inspiration may be the ability to follow through with another prompting. I'm not saying that this is definitely the reason for the struggle, but it could be. This one may be TMI, so you don't have to keep reading this one. Just skip the asterisked section.

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As I prayed about what to do with my life, I kept getting the prompting to have kids. And as my husband and I struggled to get pregnant, I would tell God that that wasn't a funny joke. He knew we had been trying, and yet he was telling me to have kids. At around 11 months, we had decided that if we weren't pregnant by this October, we would start the adoption process.

Almost immediately following quitting my job in June, we were able to get pregnant (at about 13 months). So, I guess technically we would be in the infertile category, but I feel I'm not allowed to talk about infertility because we did get pregnant, so there's that. I don't know if it was because my stress levels were finally so low or if God said, "Okay, you're finally listening to me, I'll bless you now." I won't ever really know, but I have a feeling it was a lot to do with my insane amount of stress from my job.

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Sometimes when we don't act immediately, we aren't missing out on opportunities, but we may be delaying blessings. I'm not saying that God is going to not give you blessings because you don't follow His counsel and is just going to wait. But God does know best. He knows what is hurting us, and He tells us what will help us. When we aren't following our promptings, we are just continuing to hurt ourselves. We are the ones in the way of our own blessings. When we don't trust, we don't willing receive the help God is giving to us. Hopefully, I can do better in the future at following promptings immediately. 'Cause even though my situation is still not ideal, I am doing so much better than before.