Lighthouse Keeper

13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. (Matthew 7: 13-14)

This morning, I’ve been thanking God for the narrow gate. He knows the beginning from the end and sometimes, He’ll take you around a seemingly perilous route to save you from yourself.

Eight years ago I was working in Sydney. I had my dream job at Ogilvy, as director of the social media team on Microsoft. Until one morning when I went into work and saw an innocuous meeting request in my calendar “WIP” (work in progress). It was in five minutes so I went in with the Digital Director and he promptly delivered the news that Microsoft were going to a small startup agency under their new manager and we had lost the account. Anyone who has worked in agency side knows what that means…. I was being let go. I was the highest paid person on the account so I was the first one to be thrown overboard. The juniors could be allocated to other accounts.

I was told how to turn in my Surface Pro (ugh horrible tablet but it was Microsoft!) and to please leave via the fire escape to not frighten the horses. I had read enough blog posts of let-go executives to know this was all standard procedure. I took my medicine and within 20 minutes I was off down the fire escape stairs. Dream job over.

I went and sat in Starbucks at Darling Harbour to decompress and knew it was time to come home to New Zealand. The narrow gate. God was leading and showing me how the life I had chosen to build, was built on sand. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I did it, but banking your future and self-worth on something that can so easily be taken away is not wisdom.

Fast forward to today and many of my media friends are out of work. Companies are cutting budgets and AI is rapidly taking over much of the work I did in content and digital. People are stressed over mortgages and lack of job security coming into Christmas. This time around, it’s not me on the job heap and boy am I grateful for it.

Thank God for the narrow gate – the fire escape that leads to life.