(Quick recap…God told me to be a realtor and my head and my heart finally aligned thanks to His incredible grace.)
And the Holy Spirit kept speaking.
One day early in October I was listening to a Ken Coleman Show podcast. He is a Ramsey personality and talks about pursing the career you were made for. A woman called in saying she was feeling, get this, that God was telling her to become a realtor. I mean, come on. It was basically ME calling in! She and the host, Ken, went back and forth about her fears and her passions (again…it was as though it was me calling in). Could she do it financially? Did she have a supportive spouse? Did it align with the gifts God has given her? What were the responses of friends and family when she talked about it with them?I
was staring into a mirror…through the radio…you know what I mean.
I realized I should shared with close friends and family what God was telling me to do. And do you know what every, single response was? It was some version of, “I can absolutely see you doing that!” Needless to say, it was encouraging. So if ya’ll were lying and just being nice to me…ooooooh boy you had me fooled and we need to have words 😉.
I also talked with my aunt who is a realtor and has felt the Lord moving in her business too. She encouraged me to the hills to be in prayer over this and if it’s what God is calling me too, then it will be so very right.
We, my husband and I, needed to work out a plan so I could give my employer some notice. I didn’t want to leave them in a complete lurch. Do I quit completely? Or do I see about going part-time for a few months so they can start looking for a replacement and I could have a little bit of regular income while working on building my business? Back and forth and back and forth we went.
By mid-October, with much prayer, we decided that I would give four weeks of notice and use the one week of vacation I had within those four weeks to take my real estate class. Then, dive headlong into real estate.
I worked up the courage to tell my supervisor. And the day before I was going to tell him I received a call from my kids’ school that one of them was identified as a close contact for COVID and I had to get them right away from school.
Neat.
All that energy and emotion to tell my boss I was quitting and I couldn’t tell him because we had to quarantine. By Monday, I realized I couldn’t wait and I needed to tell him now. So I set up a video conference with him and dropped the bomb that I was resigning. I think his exact words were “Well that’s not good.” I went on to explain why I was resigning and that did I loved my time there and really never thought I would leave. He knew that God had clearly called me there a year ago and honestly, we both thought I would be there for a long, long time. This was not my plan, but this was God’s plan and He wasn’t going to change His mind.
Shortly after I put in my resignation I set up a meeting with the broker I had met with at Bellabay Realty previously. I was going to tell him that I was planning to join Bellabay after I received my license. On the way to that meeting, I stopped at Lowes to pick up something for our yard. I was chatting away with the gentleman working in the garden center, talking about plants when he said to me, “You look like you are in between things right now…let me guess, you’re a realtor.” My jaw literally dropped. Yes, literally hung open.
I said, “Sir, let me tell you what part you have played in God’s story for me.” So I launched into a shortened version of the story and the fact that I was on my way to tie up some of those details. It was icing on the cake for me.
I soon completed my real estate class, scheduled my licensing exam, and started wrapping things up at my job. My last day at the assisted living community was in mid-November and then suddenly I was unemployed. I passed my licensing exam and then our whole family was exposed to COVID, directly this time so we had a long quarantine period. But at least it was after I left the assisted living community and didn’t cause staff or residents to quarantine. My kids ended up having to be out of school for more than three weeks and thankfully I could be home with them for that because I didn’t have a job to go to. Good timing? God’s timing.
December was a time for getting my toes wet and having a really enjoyable Christmas season with my family (also Christmas was on more of a budget than usual because mamma just quit her job. Can I get an “:Amen!”?)
I hit the road running with real estate in January, ready to see what God had planned…
Watch for future blog posts about the ways God has been showing up.
kelliescholmarealtor.com 