The reality of what happened sank in after the fact. Last month, I received an email at work from a person I did not (and still don’t) know, inviting me to attend a two-day event that I’d never heard of and offering me a discount code for 100% off the $150 registration fee.
Yep, you guessed it. I booked with the quickness! Without knowing exactly what to expect or anyone slated to attend, I went.
The opportunity of a lifetime must be seized within the lifetime of the opportunity.
Leonard Ravenhill
RecFest is the WORLD’s largest talent acquisition event. Not Nashville. Not Tennessee. Not America. THE WORLD. I know that now. Many attendees caught flights, rented cars, and booked hotel stays. Meanwhile, I only had to drive 23.3 miles.
Why venture into an unknown-to-me outdoor event based on the invitation of a stranger?
Because it felt like something - some insight, a connection, something - was there for me. The purposeful pull felt tangible enough for me to step away from the office for a professional development day.
To be clear, I didn’t choose the Human Resources life; it chose me. What started as managing hiring for a 60-person manufacturing facility via staffing companies while keeping a handle on accounts receivable has morphed into being their HR Department of one. As crazy as it sounds, I love it! Sure, navigating rising healthcare costs, multilevel compliance, the employee life cycle, and a recent merger comes with plenty of challenges, but being part of an organization that allows me to serve the business needs and the people makes the growing pains worthwhile.
Even though I didn’t intentionally choose to become an HR professional, I continue making conscious decisions to grow as one because, for believers, excellence should be the standard. Hence, attending RecFest 2026 to gain tips on better meeting our workforce needs.
I should’ve assumed that someway, somehow, the Lord would slip a word in for me.
Change management is sometimes trust management.
Shannon Maggiani, Marketing, Brand, & Communications Leader
My brain understood the speaker was referring to maintaining a culture of trust and employee buy-in during organizational transitions. Her words hit my soul differently, though. I’m still sitting with the hard questions:
How well do I maintain trust in the consistency of God’s character when faced with unexpected change?
What happens to my faith when mayhem ushers me into a situation that warrants a miracle?
Why do I find myself reaching for abrasiveness to self-protect as ambiguity increases, knowing full well that the Lord is still calling me to be softer? When life starts life-ing, it’s easy to forget that meekness isn’t weakness. It is strength stewarded by wisdom.
When it comes to faith matters, change management is trust management.
The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in Him, and I am helped; therefore my heart greatly rejoices, and with my song I will praise Him. The Lord is their strength, and He is the saving refuge of His anointed. Psalm 28:6-8
Do not fret because of evildoers, nor be envious of the workers of iniquity. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb. Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness. Psalm 37:1-3
He who is of a proud heart stirs up strife, but he who trusts in the Lord will be prospered. He who trusts in his own heart is a fool, but whoever walks wisely will be delivered. Proverbs 28:25-26
Every word of God is pure; He is a shield to those who put their trust in Him. Proverbs 30:5
Change is inevitable, and its pathway is often unpredictable. I’ve lived long enough to know that God-ordained processes - those unknown spans of time between believing what God can do and seeing the manifestation of His promises - never unfold the way we imagine.
Eleven days turn into a forty-year nature walk.
A dried-up well becomes the precursor to a position of authority wrapped in luxury, but nestled between the two realities is a decade-ish prison stint.
Surely, spending one’s last dime should’ve put an end to incessant menstrual bleeding and ostracization, but nah. Reaching out to touch His hem was the solution.
Is it just me, or is it wild to read that committing one’s life to spreading the Gospel and penning almost half of the New Testament books started with temporary blindness followed by a stoning, shipwreck, snakebite, and house arrest?
Whew, chile! Living, loving, and leading like Jesus while in HR ain’t so bad after all!
The point is this: We know change will come. What we don’t know is when or how it will come. Let us commit to managing our trust in the One who manages our change.
Sincerely,
LaToya NaShae