Have you ever asked yourself the question, “What am I doing with my life?” After a season of doing life a certain way, have you ever been stopped by a pressing feeling that your life is calling for a change? Whether you’re aware of what that change might be or what it may mean for you, you can’t deny those small stirrings. Those small stirrings are what lead to the bigger questions. Those questions eventually find their answers and those answers are what produce the change. 

Eighteen months ago, the small stirrings in my heart were to take my career in a different direction. After seven years of life in the cosmetology industry, my dreams were halted by state licensure regulations. To transfer your license to the state of Wisconsin, you must have 1,800 hours of cosmetology school under your belt or five years of experience behind the chair. Most states, including Illinois where I completed my education only require 1,500 hours, which is what I had completed, combined with only six months of behind the chair experience. 

Hunter had been commuting an hour one way to his college campus in order to complete his final year of college during our first six months of marriage while I worked at the salon. For me to go back to cosmetology school for three months would have eliminated our income as well as the fact that we only had five weeks of turnaround time from when Hunter accepted the teaching position in Wisconsin, to when we moved across the state line. 

But I truly believe that God was working out His bigger plan for me in the months prior to our move that exceeded my small ambitions. In 2015, I completed the twelve-month cosmetology program in just over eight months, all while planning a wedding and working at the salon in my spare time. When I finally got behind the chair, I was exhausted.  The amount of pressure I had placed on myself to make a living, to be an all-star newlywed wife, and to have my adulthood all together at twenty-two was crushing. 

I begged our salon management to allow me to take on three different roles in order to make rent and pay for gas, all while living for my giant dream of being a knockout hair stylist. But in the process, I lowered the quality of life for me and my new husband. I came home multiple nights after 8:30, missing the time to make dinner (not that I was good at it or even enjoyed botching yet another Pinterest recipe) or to have enough focus to hear about his day.  I was failing at the things I thought a wife was supposed to be able to execute flawlessly. As a result, I lived my life out of an intense stress and after months into this new routine, my soul began to crave something different.

The most excruciating part about walking away from life at the salon was the reality that my plans had failed. I feared I was using this move as a cop-out. I feared that when the rubber hit the road, I really didn’t have what it took to do hair. I spent years watching some of the best people in the business own their craft and I was tapping out after six short months. Sometimes I replied to the shocked question of, “You’re not going to do hair anymore?! You just finished all of that schooling!” with a prideful story about how I was burnt out (which was true) and how I thought a life in business was a better choice anyway.

I went from defending my decision to choose a life in cosmetology to practically disowning it. I tried winning back the respect all of the people I lost when I didn’t go into business after college.  The truth was, for the first time in my life, I was forced to build my identity around something other than a career. And as the music faded on my dreams and I began questioning my decisions and the God that allowed me to dream really big dreams, I realized that my plans weren’t bullet proof. My plans had just failed. 

And in the weeks leading up to our move, my plans continued to fail. I applied to thirty-one places in Wisconsin, some even as far as an hour commute out of absolute desperation. I tried submitting multiple resumes, job sites, and career paths. I applied for sales positions, secretary postings, and reached out to companies in fields I had never even heard of. I spent weeks grasping at straws and most times, I never received so much as a rejection letter. Just silence. 

I was sitting in a puddle of my own questions and doubts. Was it a mistake to go into hair after college? Was is a mistake not to network my way into a life in business in my hometown? If I would have gone into administration or management like the piece of paper I have framed says, would I have gotten a job quicker in Wisconsin? Why am I so ready to hang up my apron and move on from hair after I dreamed of this for so long? 

The pressure to land a job only increased after realizing upon moving in June, our rent would literally double, we would now be in charge of paying for our own insurance, cell phone plan, and all things adult-like our parents had waived while we were only living on my income, and the minor detail that Hunter’s first paycheck wouldn’t be wired into our checking account until after school started in September. This was just the tiny price we were going to have to pay for wanting to have time to get acclimated in our new town a few months before the school year began.

Days before we were to be packing up the Uhaul, I was at the salon after close packing up my bag of tools after another shift, when my phone buzzed a couple of times.  Chick-fil-A had just opened up a few months prior in our city and the Owner/Operator had quickly become a treasured favorite in our family.  I remember reading her text, crying, and then driving home trying to process what this might mean.

She told me that her former co-worker at Chick-fil-A when she worked in Raleigh was now an Operator in Wisconsin. I’d probably have a commute, but he was interested in interviewing me to come on his team once we had moved. 

“I might be a team member at Chick-fil-A,” I thought as I pictured life in a red polo and coming home smelling like poultry. The tears came from realizing that this was not a life I had ever planned, even when I was looking for jobs at sixteen. Then the tears continued to stream down my face on my drive home as I sighed in huge relief that finally, I had a lead on a job. There was hope, even if working at Chick-fil-A for a few months meant it’d buy me time to look elsewhere. 

Through thirty-one job applications, I had arrived at such a place of humility in a short amount of time. I don’t mean that in a good way. I mean that God literally had to run over my pride with a dump truck, back it up, and do it a couple more times before I arrived at Humble Village, and even then I sat at that table with my arms crossed. The reality was, I was refusing to eat the humble pie God was serving. I cried.  I played the victim.  I degraded myself and my prior career decisions that at one point in time I had believed were Jesus-led.  

But once I truly got over myself, I began to see the truth that a different story was being written for me. See, I had thought that maybe after the salon chapter in my life closed, God was just forgetting to turn the page on what was next for me.  But He wasn’t forgetting anything.  I was just reading the wrong book. 

I hope you’ll keep following His story for me in the blog posts to follow.  My hope is that you might identify somewhere between paragraphs with the truth that when your plans fall apart and my plans fail, we are being held safely in His grip–even when we may not believe it, feel it, or see it. 

Take care & take heart,

Natalie

Originally written November 2017

I have a distinct memory of my dad relaying to adolescent me that I didn’t like change. At thirteen, I was surprised that someone else could tell me something about myself that I didn’t already know. The obvious response for a middle school girl like me was to deny the outrageous concept that my father could have any insight about my strong-willed personality, the indistinguishable personality that was knitted from his very DNA. But that didn’t mean that I didn’t think about what he had said. 

Not liking change and being resistant to it was a trait that to me, was drenched in all things negativity and in return, I resisted the fact that I was resistant to change.  That alone proved my dad absolutely right. Thankfully, it was never about scorekeeping for my parents; it was about coaching up my character.  What became helpful for me to learn was yes, I do not like change. But that also allowed me to learn that sometimes change is necessary. Sometimes change is good. Sometimes change is inevitable. And sometimes change isn’t meant to be understood. 

The coping mechanism for a change-resistor like myself is to give change a better name, so I have arrived at the word: seasons. Growing up in the Midwest, the changing seasons are engrained in the calendar of my spirit. Come September, I welcome fall-colored flannels and pumpkin spice lattes like my long-lost friends. By December I pray for all things snow covered and white.  March always seems like a long time coming and I love the break in the cold air it brings.  Come June, I am psychologically programmed to crave the sunshine and my sweet iced tea. 

Oh, how I wish I could welcome changing relationships like I do the seasons.  For most of my life, I have felt like I am either one step ahead of most friendships (perhaps the more realistic description is way out in left field of an idealistic relationship) or three steps behind.  What I’ve found myself whispering in my prayers since my childhood is the deep desire for the effort and care I place in my friendships to be reciprocated. 

But most times, they’re not.  Or the favor I hold with people changes with the seasons.  Other times I may hit strides with certain friends that I come to realize later were merely circumstantial.  

In college, I can remember laying awake at night hoping that someday when I was married, I’d never forget what it was like to be single. I feared that married years would blur the memory of what it was like to be single or to date and the possibility that it may diminish my relatability with the friends who hadn’t arrived at that stage just yet. 

In the first year of our marriage, Hunter and I looked at each other so many times and promised each other to never forget what it was like to be married and not have kids.  To us, everyone had kids and the not having them part was a total prevention of connecting with other adults. Everyone, and I literally mean that, told us that we would make more friends our age once we started having kids and joined that season of life. What a frustrating reality.  A reality that we were just beginning to adjust and adapt to, by the way, until my positive pregnancy test had other plans. 

While I’m being honest, the season I’m currently walking through has been quiet and at times desolate. Making friends can be tough, especially when you move.  I want to applaud and award all of the adults who move and make friends like it’s nothing. If I’m describing you, you are to be highly commended on such novel and riveting accomplishment. But if you are like me, putting yourself out there can be challenging.  I attend everything I am invited to in our little town these days, but the second I reach out to try to plan something on my own, I can’t get any takers.  So for all of you recent Uhaul users with new friends, please write a “How to Make Friends for Dummies” book with me in mind.

One thing I’ve learned about myself is that I feel things on an incredibly deep level that transparently speaking, can freak some people out.  As an external processor, I can get on to topics and tangents that come across intense and overwhelming.  Sometimes talking about the weather seems way too surface level to entertain me because I have a profound soul craving to dig deeper into the human heart and mind.  While most choose thinking simply, I naturally choose analytical complexity. 

I wish knowing this about myself would be able to solve what I believe is my social ineptness.  Occasionally I have those reality check moments when the way I perceive a friendship as incredibly special, like “best friend” special is exposed for not being as true for the other person. And of course, nothing brings this to light better than when a friend gets engaged or enters into a season that you’re just not in at the moment. 

I can look back on my adolescent years and find so much pain from friendships that fell apart and fell apart hard.  My first real experience in middle school of having a group of girl friends that seemed to accept me turned into a season of immense isolation by the time I got into high school.  Their “Monica & Rachel” friendship lived on long after I came across a journal entry stating they wished Natalie Nelsen had never been born or been accepted into their group. 

I’ve experienced betrayal of the cruelest kind by best friends and boyfriends, college roommates changing their mind on how they felt about me and letting everyone know, being third string, left out, stood up, and enough at-home-alone-and-uninvited-on-a-Friday-night situations to leave me on a therapist’s couch for the rest of my life. 

So you can imagine, I know every Taylor Swift lyric that has ever been written and I can recognize the seasons changing better than the weatherman.  But in a very backwards and upside down way, I am grateful to have experienced those friendships and to have known heartache and devastation on such a powerful level.  Time has allowed me to see all of the ways that I too contributed to those situations and every single ounce of those experiences have been engrained into my character and my perception of the changing seasons. 

I ask myself, “Where do I go from here?” recurrently.  So here it is: I have accepted that the relationships I had last year look very different this year.  The friendships I am so blessed to even have right now may not be standing by the time I take my last breath.  Any friendship or favor I have with people is such a gift, even if they may stand for only a season.  The surface level conversations I have with others even when I desire to go so much deeper—even those exchanges fall under God’s favor on me.  

There are so many times I have failed to recognize that I am sinking in an ocean of His grace.  Isn’t it crazy how we can get in the way of ourselves so often?  I am so rich in my relationships with Hunter and our parents. Blessed beyond measure is not a heavy enough of statement to truly express how grateful I am for a husband who sees me and listens to my heart and for parents and in-laws who invest so much time into my life even when I may reciprocate the same attentiveness. 

And with that, I have come to recognize that I am truly wired to always crave deep friendships.  It’s taken me an incredible amount of time to understand that the void I tend to habitually feel is only meant to be filled by Jesus.  That may sound insane, but I believe it.  Ever thought, “There’s gotta be more to life than this?”.  Stacie Orrico said it best in 2003, but she’s absolutely right.  And there is more to life than this.  The gap I sense in relationships is supposed to be there. I am supposed to long for more. More is Jesus.  More is the friendship and the relationship that only He can give.  

The seasons may change with the people placed in my life, but my security can always be found in the person of Jesus Christ, who knows both true friendship and isolation irrefutably well.  That is the hope we can cling to in this life!  

If you are familiar with the Enneagram assessment, it’s probably blatantly obvious to you that I am a true four.  Fours love to be unique individualists that hold significance while at the same time wrestling with their uniqueness, causing them to feel lonely and yearning to be understood. 

And just like my dad knew the heart of thirteen-year-old me, I am so grateful to know and trust a heavenly Father who understands me for all my uniqueness. Who meets me in my loneliness moments. Who understands my disappointment when friendships don’t feel reciprocated.  Who validates my significance.  Who is the creator of every season.  And who remains the same when everything changes. 

I may never understand change, but I love the fact that the Author of Change fully understands and deeply loves me. 

Take care & take heart, 

Natalie

For more on the Enneagram assessment of a four or to hear my personality described to a T: https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/type-4/

Originally written November 6, 2017

Sixteen months ago, I deleted my Facebook account. I turned my Instagram and Twitter accounts to private. I scaled back on how much I posted and shared with friends and followers. I became gripped by the fear of being known not only online, but in life. 

About two weeks before we moved to Wisconsin, I was working from my laptop in a booth at a frequented, casual restaurant in town. Behind me, there were two women who knew my parents and who I’d met a few times that were talking about raising young adolescent daughters. As I continued to work, their conversation filled with the honest wondering and questioning about how to approach the topic of dating with their daughters grew. It didn’t take much longer before they said my name, causing me to look up just in time before one woman asked me how my godly parents, specifically my dad, approached the subject with me when I was in my teenage years.

I remember taking a few moments to gather my thoughts as I saw flashbacks into the emotional outbursts, arguments, and defiance I brought upon my dad. At fifteen, I was on a mission to date someone that caused my parents an unnecessary amount of red flags. All of my life, my dad and I had been incredibly close, so I grieve when I think back on how I responded in his gracious approach to me during this season of growing pains. If there is any subject in my life that humbles me, it’s me when I was dating in high school. It’s also one of the topics that I’m passionate to share about because I now see all the ways to help bridge the gap between teens and parents.

When I look back on that time, I am in absolute awe of how God healed my relationship with my parents and the testimony I have to share because of it.  So as I shared with these two women about how I was not the ideal child and so often reacted wrongfully in spite of my parent’s guidance, I watched as mortification and shock came across their faces before I could really share about the humility Jesus brought into my life in the years following. The first response I received was, “But you’re the pastor’s daughter. You’re not supposed to act like that.” 

That was the exact moment I allowed myself to become paralyzed by the fear of being known.

Being Pastor Jeff’s daughter has been one of the absolute biggest privileges of my life. I am choked up just thinking about the legacy my father has etched on my heart to love Jesus wholeheartedly and to live life with the purpose of serving others for His glory. I am continuously blown away by the favor my dad has with people and I think it’s because he lives out this legacy so well. He has also taught me that favor comes from the Lord and can diminish at any time, because it’s a privilege to have relationships with others and not an entitlement. 

Sometimes, when someone like my dad knows and connects with so many people, they in turn feel just as connected to the rest of his family. That’s how I know my dad really loves on people, when they are comfortable enough to feel that way. For me, there have been times when I am overwhelmed by the amount of people that feel like they know me intimately because of my dad, but I may not even be confident on their name. Often this makes me feel loved and cared for, that sweet people would take an interest in me, but there is also a guilt-factor of feeling like we have a second-hand relationship instead of knowing each other first-hand. 

What lays heavy on my heart is not having the organic opportunity to share not just my Facebook highlight reel, but the messy, imperfect, behind-the-scenes of my life. I think I’ve unintentionally tried fitting their mold of being the pastor’s perfect daughter rather than feeling confident enough in Jesus to share on a deeper level. It’s that fear of not being what’s expected of me, like with the women in the booth, that has left me hesitant and guarded too soon.

Yesterday, a co-worker was describing my personality back to me and stated that I’m not super easy to get to know. “Inch by inch we can pull things out of you,” is what was said. A new team member this week said I seemed “skeptical” to her. As I drove home thinking about these statements, I couldn’t help but believe this is not part of the purpose Jesus had for me. I’ve had to go back to those moments where I felt

I don’t think Jesus ever intended being known to be a fear, especially one that has gripped my life. I’m not sure many people in Wisconsin know that I was an open book once. I’m not sure if they know that I used to sing or that I used to write and had a blog through high school. I even had a YouTube channel with my childhood neighbor, Jane that I loved. You won’t find traces of either of those things today because somewhere along the way, I allowed comments from someone else to translate into the idea that I’m not good enough. 

I love that Jesus allowed himself to be known by others and even allowed ridicule to come upon him. By this, he didn’t live out his life and his ministry in fear! He walked boldly and confident, not because of what others said about him, but because he unapologetically believed what his Father thought about him. If you ever have the opportunity to read what God says about you, I promise you it is all good and full of love, even when He has to call us into the best possible versions of ourselves.

All my fear aside, the true personality God knit together for me was meant forcommunity. In fact, I believe that’s exactly what Jesus calls us all into and I am so thankful that he set the tone on how to handle favor with others.

So here I am. Back to writing. Back to sharing my heart in the hope that someone may find it encouraging today. 

You may be a lot like me. Unsure exactly of your purpose, but have felt paralyzed to pursue the thing that stirs your heart. Some of you may not have a clue what stirs your interest and passions in this season in your life. I’m totally with you on that. My challenge for you is to start somewhere by letting someone you can trust get to know the deeper you. You may not be able to see things in yourself, but that dependable person just might be able to speak truth into your life and walk alongside you as you discover what stirs your heart. I know this blog wouldn’t have happened without Hunter speaking those quiet truths into my heart over and over. And over. 

So may your heart be stirred today, that you may know that you are beloved and fearlessly known with all of the love, grace, and truth heaven can offer. 

Take care & take heart,

Natalie

Originally written October 14, 2017