It happened a few nights ago. I had just finished a group coaching session with a dozen new ladies in what turned out to be one of the most gratifying and powerful coaching experiences I have had. As I drove home, replaying the evening, I debriefed myself, and looked for chinks in the way I had presented the coaching opportunity. I noted the areas I needed to improve and congratulated myself for staying out of the way when I really wanted to fill the silence with my own voice. I won’t lie; I was flying pretty high on the residual energy from that room full of women.

As soon as I got home, I checked my email and found a message from a woman in Oregon who I have never met. She had found my website and felt compelled to write me. Her opening words were such an encouragement – almost giddy with the realization that she had found a kindred spirit in me, a fellow follower of Jesus who desires to make a difference in the lives of women of faith. Seriously, she even cut a pasted my own words, remarking about the hope she was feeling, the promise of connection around the things of God. After a few short paragraphs of this, she said something that took my breath away.

I read them in stunned silence, alternating between sadness, anger and self-defense. Her words? “Dear Barbara, why are you selling God’s truth, which is free for the asking? You are just like the money changers that Jesus drove out of the temple!”

moneychangers

I’ll leave the rest of that story for another time. My journey as a Christian Coach has taken me down a gnarly path our non-Christian counterparts don’t travel.  They don’t face the criticism from God’s own people that want to put a pricing freeze on the services of their brethren. I could go on, but the real point I want to make is this: I have had to make peace with myself and my own intentions regarding the career path I’ve chosen and made available to God’s people. I have to acknowledge that my brothers and sisters who criticize me have no knowledge of the soul searching and divine inquiry I’ve made around the one thing that they wouldn’t think twice about: “Is it permissible to make a living at what God has gifted me to do?”

I find great relief in the fact that God has designed us with strengths and passions to carry out His work, and often times combines that work with His Fatherly intentions to clothe us, shelter us, feed us and give us good things. I choose to believe that again and again.