A Leap of Faith

I think people forget that we’re talking about leaping out into the abyss on the belief that it’s the thing to do. And all the feeling like it’s the thing to do does not, for one moment, make the abyss fill.

At the end of this year, I’m going to hang up my engineering credentials and take up full time spiritual work.

This is not a small decision, nor one I’m making lightly. I’m giving up a career that pays better, is more certain and has far more fixed hours. I’m giving up the 401k I fought for, the insurance benefits and all the creature comforts that money can buy. I’m giving up the reassurance that payday is biweekly and I have paid vacation and sick days.

I’m giving up prestige. I am not a junior engineer—I build prototypes for a living, which is both extremely prestigious and extremely hard to get into as a career. I’m who you call when you have a complex problem that you need solved across different data centers.

I’m giving up something I worked as hard as I’ve ever worked in my life to get into.

Bitches, I made it out of the gutter.

I started my college experience as a homeless single mother with a case of PTSD from child abuse so severe that I was, at one point, certified as being permanently disabled. My childhood was so abusive that I had to see therapists who specialize in active duty military coming back from war zones, undercover cops, and retired government agents. Therapists without that particular specialty found me completely unmanageable (or frightening.)

All that therapy (and a truly amazing amount of pharmaceuticals) did dick all for me. The spirit dried that shit up in a few years, no medication or disability needed, and don’t let anybody tell you that there is no healing in vodou.

I’m giving up years of carefully emulating a middle class culture—and those of you who didn’t come from that background know how fucking restrictive it can be and how hard looking like the right kind of person gate keeps the ability to make it into certain pay brackets.

I’m giving up regular meals, and I might be one of the few people know who knows exactly how long it takes my hair to start falling out from malnutrition, because I nearly starved to death several times in my late teens and early twenties.

Why?

The easy answer is that the spirits have told me to.

The hard answer… is not that hard. The hard answer is that this is what I came for.

I came for you, and for me, and to serve.