There's a verse from King Solomon that I didn't fully understand until life forced me to. "To everything there is a season." I used to nod along to that line the way you nod along to something printed on a mug. Nice words. Comforting, maybe. But I didn't feel it until I was standing in an office in Davao City, holding a title I thought was already mine, only to watch it slip through my fingers.
Let me take you back.
The Job That Was Supposed to Be Easy
Three years ago, I was working in Davao City as an Accounts Payable staff member in the accounting department of a US-based company. I moved there, found an apartment, and settled in for what turned into a year and four months of work that would quietly shape the rest of my career.
In the beginning, they trained me like they train everyone — step by step, task by task. But something in me refused to stay at "just enough." I improved. I got faster. And the faster I got, the more I noticed something uncomfortable: I was running out of things to do.
I was the only person on my team handling that particular task. No teammate doing the same thing beside me, no one to compare notes with, no backup. Just me and a workload that, frankly, wasn't heavy enough to fill my hours anymore. So I did what felt natural — I went to my team leader and asked for more.
"Baka meron ka pang pwedeng ipatrabaho sa akin."
That single request opened a door I didn't expect. Task after task got handed to me, until eventually I had touched almost every corner of what our Accounts Payable department did. I wasn't the fastest at all of it. I'll be honest about that. But I understood it — the logic behind each process, the reason things were done a certain way, the bottom line that mattered more than the speed.
When Being Useful Starts to Feel Like Being Chosen
Somewhere in that stretch of learning everything I could get my hands on, something else happened. The company was transitioning to its own in-house accounting and warehouse software, built from scratch. The IT team — often coordinating with people from the US and China — needed someone who actually understood the day-to-day encoding work to explain what the software needed to do.
Guess who they kept asking for.
Me. The one who did the encoding. The one who could explain not just my own task, but the tasks of the people around me, because I had made it my business to understand the whole department, not just my slice of it. I remember sessions where I'd walk the IT team through what a transaction actually looked like on the ground, so they wouldn't waste hours guessing at functionality. It felt good to be needed like that. It felt like proof.
So when my team leader pulled me aside one day and told me I was being considered for a promotion — from Accounts Payable staff to AP Accountant — it didn't feel like a surprise. It felt like a confirmation of everything I'd already sensed about myself.
I thought: I can do this.
I knew the audits. I knew the checks. I knew where to start and what criteria mattered for the role. I had, in every practical sense, already mapped the department in my head. This wasn't wishful thinking — this was the job I actually wanted, the direction I wanted my accounting career to grow in. I went into the interview confident. Not arrogant — just sure. Sure the way you're sure of something you've already proven to yourself, quietly, over months of extra work nobody asked you to do.
The Wait That Turned Into Silence
Days passed. Then a week. Then two.
I followed up with my team leader, expecting an update, maybe even a congratulations that had just been delayed by paperwork. Instead, I was told to follow up myself directly with the Accounting Team, since there was no news on their end.
So I did. I reached out to my point of contact and asked, plainly, if there was any update on my candidacy for AP Accountant.
The answer came back simple, almost casual: the Accounting Team had decided I should stay in production — because I was too flexible, too useful where I already was.
I want you to sit with that phrase for a second, because I had to. Too flexible. Not "not qualified enough." Not "you need more training." Just — we need you exactly where you are.
In that moment, it felt like someone had poured cold water over me while I was still mid-sentence about my own future. I had expected this. I had earned this, or so I believed. I wasn't just guessing that I was capable — I knew it, the same way you know your own handwriting. I had even contributed insights that helped the Accounting Team improve their own audit process. I was, in some very real sense, already doing parts of the job I was asking to be promoted into.
And still, it wasn't given to me.
Walking Away From a Job I Didn't Hate
One or two months after that conversation, I handed in my resignation.
Here's the part people don't expect: it wasn't because the company was toxic. It wasn't because management mistreated me. If anything, that team remains one of the best I've ever worked with in my entire corporate life. Some of the people from that job are still close friends of mine today. We still check in on each other. The environment, honestly, was close to ideal.
I left because I was full — not out of patience with the people, but out of patience with stagnation. I could feel, in a way that's hard to explain but impossible to ignore, that my career had stopped moving. And once you feel that stillness in something you genuinely care about, staying starts to feel like slowly disappearing.
So I resigned. And that decision set off everything that has happened in my career since.
What I Eventually Understood
Here's the realization that took me a long time — years, really — to sit with and accept: being capable of something does not automatically mean it's meant for you right now.
Knowing you're qualified doesn't guarantee the door opens. I had to learn that the hard way, because I had personalized every part of that rejection. I take my career seriously. I take my future seriously. So when an opportunity to grow shows up — even a difficult one, even a pressured one — I want it. I want to be stretched. I want to serve at a higher level. That part of me hasn't changed.
But God's thoughts are not our thoughts. And sometimes what looks like a closed door isn't a judgment on your competence — it's simply not your season yet.
That's the part that stings the most to accept, especially when you're the type of person who executes, who tries everything, who pushes at every opportunity presented to you. I don't sit on possibilities. I test them. I pursue them. And when they don't go my way, I've had to train myself to release them just as intentionally — to say, "okay, Lord, You know better than I do," and mean it.
Because here's the truth: I can never really claim something "wasn't for me" if I never tried for it in the first place. Trying is the cost of finding out. It means opening yourself up to risk, to disappointment, to the very real possibility of being told no after doing everything right. That sting, that broken feeling when the answer isn't what you expected — it's not weakness. It's proof you actually cared about the outcome.
If you're in that exact place right now — capable, prepared, willing, and still watching an opportunity pass you by for reasons you can't fully explain — I need you to hear this: it's not always about qualification. It's not always about ability. Sometimes it really is beyond human logic entirely. Divine timing doesn't explain itself the way a rejection email does.
There Is a Season for Everything
King Solomon wrote it plainly: a season to plant, a season to harvest, a season for joy, a season for sorrow, a season to laugh, a season to weep, a season to live, and a season to let go. All of it holds space in a single life. All of it is allowed to exist, even the parts that hurt.
And through every one of those seasons — whichever one you're standing in right now — God remains worthy of the highest honor. He is still the God above every god, still the personal Savior over every unanswered question you're carrying.
The real danger isn't being told no. The real danger is refusing to accept it when it comes. If you can't sit with a "not yet," if you can't process a closed door without letting it corrode your character or your convictions, that resistance becomes its own kind of loss. I know it hurts. I know it's hard. I know what it feels like to be broken over something you wanted so badly.
But there's a reason behind it, even when you can't see it yet. Let the feeling move through you. Surrender it. Don't let disappointment reshape who you are or what you believe. Keep your ground. Keep your humility. And trust that when the timing is finally right — God's timing, not yours — it will be given.
That's why, whenever you see me exploring something new — school, work, personal growth, content creation, ministry — understand that I'm doing it fully aware I might be told no. There's no other way to find out whether something is meant for you except to actually take the step and let the result speak for itself.
So if you're in a season of waiting right now, of wanting to grow but watching the door stay shut for reasons you don't understand yet — I'm proud of you for still showing up anyway. Keep doing what you're doing. And surrender the rest, all of it, to the One who actually holds the plan.
Mahal na mahal kita. Mahal na mahal ka ng Diyos.
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