Trusting God With Your Career: What a Vendor Tour Taught Me About Seasons

There is something in a man that needs other men. Not in a sentimental way — in a fundamental way. God wired you for it. The problem is that life doesn’t always cooperate with how you’re wired, and learning to keep trusting God with your career through those seasons is one of the hardest disciplines a man can take on.

I work remotely. Most days it’s just me, a screen, well, three actually, and the discipline I rely on daily to stay focused. I chose this setup, and there are real benefits to it. But if I’m honest, there are moments where the silence gets thick. Where I miss the randomness of a hallway conversation, the energy of a room full of people working toward something together. Where I miss feeling like I’m part of something bigger than a Zoom grid.

This week I had one of those moments — the good kind. I toured a vendor facility. Got to walk the floor, shake hands, talk shop face to face with real people. It sounds ordinary. It wasn’t. I drove home that afternoon more alive than I’d felt in weeks.

That should tell you something.

Your Restlessness Is Telling You the Truth

The point isn’t remote work. The point is what the moment revealed: a man remembering who he actually is. I’m built for connection. You probably are too. And when the circumstances of life temporarily put distance between who you are and how you’re living, the reminder of what you’re missing isn’t a problem to fix. It’s a gift. It’s your identity asserting itself.

Here’s where men get it wrong though. We take that restlessness — that ache for something more — and we let it curdle into complaint. We start narrating our situation as a grievance. I hate working remote. I never see anyone. This isn’t sustainable. And maybe some of that is true. But complaint is not a strategy. It’s just noise, and it changes nothing.

What Scripture Says About Seasons

Scripture saw this long before you did. The Preacher in Ecclesiastes 3:1 put it plainly: “There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens.” Read that again with your own situation in mind. Your current season is appointed. Not random. Not a mistake. Not God forgetting about you. Appointed — which means it has a beginning, a purpose, and an end you can’t yet see.

The Thomistic framework that runs through everything I write puts it this way: the will, properly ordered, moves toward the good that is actually available — not the good we wish were available. Aquinas understood that a man who spends his energy lamenting what he doesn’t have is a man who fails to receive what he does. The vendor tour was a gift. A Tuesday afternoon reminder that God knows what you need, and He will bring it when you need it.

Trusting God With Your Career Means Holding the Season With Open Hands

That’s the theological move here: trust in Him. Not passively — not as an excuse to disengage or stop pursuing — but actively. Trusting God with your career doesn’t mean sitting back and waiting for life to change. It means you keep showing up, keep doing the work, keep being present to the season you’re in. And you hold it with open hands, knowing that seasons change.

You may not be remote forever. The man who’s thriving in a home office today might be leading a team in a building two years from now. God moves people. He moves circumstances. He has done it in my life more times than I can count, and never on my timeline. The wilderness years I spent drifting — leaving a career, losing my bearings — felt permanent while I was in them. They weren’t. They were formation. They were the season before the next one.

Give Thanks for the Moments That Break Through

So here’s what I want to leave you with, friend: resist the urge to complain about where you are. Not because your feelings don’t matter, but because complaint will blind you to the graces hidden inside the season. The vendor tour mattered to me this week precisely because connection had been scarce. The contrast made me grateful. And gratitude is a posture that keeps a man oriented toward God.

Give thanks for the moments that break through. They are not accidents.

Action Items:

• This week, write down one thing about your current season that you have been treating as a grievance. Name it plainly. Then write one way that season may be forming you — whether you can see the full picture or not.
• The next time you have an unexpected moment of connection — a real conversation, a face-to-face interaction you didn’t plan on — stop before you move on. Thank God for it specifically, out loud or in writing.
• Identify one person you have been meaning to reach out to but haven’t because your current situation makes it feel inconvenient. Send the message this week. Don’t wait for the season to change.

If this resonated, it’s part of a larger pursuit. The idea that your identity is settled before your circumstances are — that you can hold any season with open hands — is one of the five pillars I walk through in my book Pursue Well. It’s written for men who are done drifting and ready to become who they’re meant to be. No hype. Just the work.