The Next Chapter

I've just completed the first week of the next chapter of my life--at least the next chapter in the part devoted to work and career. Tuesday was my first day as an editor at Reformation Heritage Books, here in Grand Rapids.

I honestly wasn't looking to move on to a new chapter. I was perfectly happy with the Discovery House Publishers chapter. I love the people I worked with, I was working with some amazing authors that I had come to consider friends, and I enjoyed my work. I had just celebrated my fifth anniversary there, and I was looking forward to more. There was probably no one more surprised than I was that I would be moving on.

But even though we don't know anything about it, God has decided long ago the number of pages in each chapter in our lives, and as we turn a page, we're often caught off guard to find that we're at the end of one chapter and heading for the next.

I got my first hint that I was headed for something new back in March when I attended the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology here in Grand Rapids. Henry's organization, Reformed Fellowship, had an exhibit at the conference, and he was representing the organization there. I wandered around, looking at the other publishers' tables, and found myself having a conversation with Dr. Joel Beeke, the founder and president of Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary and Reformation Heritage Books. By the time I left his exhibit, he had my business card and had asked me to do an editing sample for him the following week. I walked back to my husband, laughed, and said, "I think he's offering me a job." But then I said quickly, "He's a busy man. He'll forget all about this by Monday."

But he didn't forget. On Monday morning, there was an unedited manuscript, with a request from him to edit the first three brief chapters. After that, I had about a month to think about leaving DHP and moving on to RHB. And every time I thought of a reason to stay put in my nice, comfortable DHP chapter, situations and people (usually Dr. Beeke) kept giving me better reasons to move on to the next one.

And so I did. And I feel a little bit like Huck Finn,who at the end of his trip down the Mississippi, decides to  strike out for the frontier. It was sad to leave behind so many dear coworkers and authors at DHP, and yet I have a calm sense of God's calling. And when God has turned the page, you just know that what's next might be crazy, unsettling, confusing, and wild--like the frontier--but it will be good.