Note: This one’s a bit longer than my usual posts will be. There’s no short way to tell this story, honestly.
I did not expect to spend my birthday unemployed.
After nearly eight years at Triumph Financial—a company I had honestly expected to stay with until retirement—I was laid off in August as part of a staff reduction the company described publicly as affecting about 5% of its workforce. For a long time Triumph was not just where I worked; it was where I thought I would finish.
That would have been enough on its own. But it landed in a very specific kind of storm.
I had just lost my dad in July. We were deep in grief and logistics and that strange combination of numbness and noise that comes with saying goodbye to a parent. At the same time, we were three weeks away from the official public launch of a new church plant. We’d been running preview services for about a month, still recruiting band members, still filling out positions on the team. The momentum was very real. So was the fragility.
Into that mix came the phone call from HR, and then the meeting, and then the walk‑out.
Not my first time at this rodeo
Part of why this one hit as hard as it did is that it wasn’t the first time. Before Triumph I had already lived through three separate unemployment stints in three years, including a six‑month search immediately prior. That kind of repetition wears grooves into your thinking. It whispers that maybe this is just who you are now: the guy always in transition, always on the bubble. It doesn’t just annoy you; over time it takes a real toll on your mental health.
Before Triumph I’d spent years in sales engineering and product development/management roles—still near the work, but not on the front lines of day‑to‑day engineering or ops. When Triumph came along, I genuinely felt unqualified. The job was (at the onset) very hands-on than I’d been in a very long while. But there was no question in my mind that it was an answer to prayer. The timing, the specifics, the way it lined up with what my family needed—it was too precise to chalk up to luck. I walked into that job grateful and a little stunned that they had more confidence in me than I had in myself! Over nearly eight years it became one of those rare roles you quietly hope will carry you all the way into retirement.
Then, on my birthday in August 2025, HR walked me out.
There’s an odd irony in that. The same company had, in earlier years, given employees their birthdays off as a perk. The benefit didn’t survive the years of belt‑tightening; the date, apparently, did.
NOTE: This is not a bash session about Triumph. I still love the company and the people there. I may question why I was among those chosen for involuntary separation, but I get it. “It’s just business.”
When the rhythm disappears
If you’ve ever had a plan you trusted suddenly removed from your hands, you know the first feeling isn’t always anger. It’s disorientation.
For years my calendar had a very obvious shape: work responsibilities, leadership, family, ministry, music when I could fit it in. Overnight one of the biggest anchors vanished. On paper I had “extra time.” In reality I had a lot of unassigned anxiety.
And the hard part was that ministry did not pause to make room for my uncertainty. Sunday still came. Rehearsal still had to happen. People still needed to be led. Songs still had to be learned. Gear still had to work. The church plant’s public launch date did not move because my job did. We had preview services on the books, band members in various stages of commitment, charts to write, and a three‑week countdown to “We’re open, come on in.” Ministry rarely waits for your life to become convenient.
So I found myself carrying grief over my dad, shock from the layoff, and the weight of a launch—all while trying to be a non‑anxious presence on Sunday mornings. Some days I managed it. Some days I played and prayed on muscle memory while the battle for my focus raged in my mind.
The sentence I needed to hear
As I was being walked out—escorted, badged, just like everybody else—I heard something that did not come from HR:
“This job did not define you.
This position did not define you.
I brought you this job, and I’ll bring you the next one.”
I’m very cautious about “God told me” language. My own internal monologue is loud enough that I don’t trust every sentence that floats through it. But this was different. It cut against my fear instead of reinforcing it. It contradicted the storyline my anxiety wanted to tell. It lined up with what Scripture says about identity and provision.
So I’ve chosen to treat that sentence as more than just a comforting thought. It hit every pressure point at once: the belief that my worth was tied to my title, the fear that my career had been a fluke, the suspicion that God had been generous once but might not be again.
That didn’t make the job loss less real. It made it less ultimate.
Q4, scammers, and the arithmetic of severance
Of course there was still the practical side. I was looking for a management role in Q4 of 2025—not exactly prime hiring season. Budgets tighten. Open reqs stall out between Thanksgiving and year‑end planning. It wasn’t exactly a frothy “everyone’s hiring leaders” kind of economy; it was cautious and uneven.
I had severance, and I was grateful for it, but living off a lump sum is psychologically different than receiving a paycheck. A paycheck feels like a stream. Severance feels like a countdown. Every expense became arithmetic. You start doing math in your head at odd hours: How many months of runway is this, really? What if the search takes longer than last time? What if this time is the one I don’t climb out of?
The job search brought the usual circus—good recruiters mixed with ghosting, empty promises, and scammers hoping your anxiety would override your discernment. Messages from people who clearly didn’t read your background. “Executive opportunities” that aren’t. Recruiters who vanish without a word after telling you that you’re “exactly what they’ve been looking for.” Invitations to move the conversation to some random messaging app a little too quickly. And let’s not forget the ones where you’re four interviews into a seeming perfect opportunity, only to find they’re offering half the salary you need (and the job warrants). When you’re already carrying grief and prepping a church launch, running viability and security analyses on every LinkedIn message is exhausting.
Ministry in the middle
All of that was happening while ministry kept moving. We still had preview services to run, a public launch to prepare for, new songs to teach, and the quirks of a plant meeting in a gym on Sunday mornings. I tried to use the extra weekday time wisely—building publishing work, writing, recording. Some days it felt like healthy stewardship. Other days it felt more like I was just trying to outrun my own thoughts.
There was no clean line between “career me,” “ministry me,” and “family me.” It was all just me: one person trying to lead worship, lead a team, and lead a family while carrying grief, financial uncertainty, and the memory of three previous unemployment stints. If nothing else, it has made me less impressed with polished answers and more interested in being gentle with the people I’m leading—because most of them are carrying something I can’t see.
If that’s you right now, hear this: you are not failing because your circumstances are affecting you. You are a person, not a machine.
Mercy in the timing
I was unemployed for less than three months. Some of my peers searched six, eight, or more. Some are still searching. I don’t say that to minimize the stress of my own stretch. I say it because gratitude requires proportion. In that light, landing at Baker Botts in that window was mercy, not inevitability. It did not erase the months leading up to it or the years before that, but it reminded me that God has not forgotten how to open doors.
And it underscored the sentence I’d heard on the way out of Triumph, in the middle of my dad’s death, and during the church launch:
This job did not define you.
This position did not define you.
The God who brought you this job will bring you the next one.
What unemployment can teach that comfort never will
I am not romanticizing job loss. I would not recommend it as a spiritual growth strategy.
But there is something clarifying about standing in church, preparing to serve, while carrying your own private uncertainty into the room. It makes you less interested in pretending. Less interested in polished answers. More aware that most people around you are walking in with something heavy you know nothing about. It also forces you to ask honest questions about where you’ve been storing your identity.
If a title, a company, or a role being taken away feels like your self has been taken away, that may be a signal about where you’ve been quietly putting your hope. I say that as someone who has had to confront that reality more than once.
So if you’re in that place—laid off, underemployed, grieving, launching something new you don’t feel ready for, still showing up to serve while your internal monologue runs numbers in the background—hear this: God is not surprised by your résumé. He is not impressed by your title. And He is not constrained by the timing of Q4 budgets.
Stay faithful. Keep serving. Keep applying. Ignore the scammers. Spend carefully. Use the extra time well if you can. Rest when you can’t. And thank Him for every door He opens, whether it swings wide in three months or creaks slowly over eight.
What has unemployment been teaching you that comfort never would have?
Unworthy, but His,
Nick
Scripture
“And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”
Philippians 4:19, ESV
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