Making sacrifices in pursuit of “God’s calling”
And how reclaiming what we gave up can support recovery
A Note From Megan | Publication Date: May 5th, 2026
When I was in my junior and senior year of high school, I had two competing career aspirations. On one hand, I wanted to take my sewing skills to the next level by enrolling in fashion design school. And on the other hand, I wanted to “help people.”
I started sewing most of my own clothes when I was a young teenager—probably about 13 or 14 years old—because I was becoming more conscientious of appearance and wanting to fit in. However, my family was extremely poor, and we didn’t have the money to spend on new clothing, especially not the latest styles. So I learned to make them.
I would spend hours and hours hunched over my mom’s sewing machine creating dresses and cool flared pants (think the early aughts). I even figured out how to make corset vests that layered on top of peasant blouses—a brief and somewhat unfortunate trend at the time.
But my masterpiece was my prom dress. Even though I was homeschooled, a couple friends of mine found a way to sneak me in, and it became one of the highlights of my adolescent years. I took so much pride in being able to wear my own unique design, and I discovered that I both blended in and stood out (in a good way) among all the “regular kids” (a.k.a. not the weird homeschoolers like me) who had bought their dresses at the mall or formal dress shops.
While learning to sew started out as something of a necessity because I wanted to fit in with my peers on Sundays and during Wednesday night youth group, I eventually came to really enjoy tapping into my creativity in this way and loved the seemingly endless options for what I could create.
My enjoyment of sewing and blossoming love for fashion design was really at the root of what became a bit of an existential crisis as I tried to figure out my next steps with high school graduation looming on the horizon.
This period of my life was also probably my most devout in terms of my religious beliefs. I had a prayer journal, and I wrote letters to God nearly every day, asking him to reveal “his will” for my life. More than anything, I wanted to be a “servant,” and I became more and more convinced that this life is “nothing”—the only thing that mattered was the afterlife.
Eventually, I felt convicted that attending school for fashion design would be pursuing “desires of the flesh” and that, if I truly wanted to serve God, I needed to choose a career oriented towards “helping people.” Although I was still a little fuzzy on what exactly that would look like.
With some heaviness of heart and a healthy dose of martyr energy, I disposed of the materials I had collected about various fashion design schools, and I set my sights on enrolling in a Christian university, where I eventually discovered that a social work degree checked all the boxes for a career in helping people.
It’s been over 20 years since I made the decision to eschew my hopes and dreams of becoming a fashion designer in favor of spending a lifetime in service to God, and I sometimes wonder what life may have looked like if I had followed my creative passion instead of my spiritual convictions. I don’t really get deeply lost in this fantasy, and overall I’m very grateful for a truly fulfilling career up to this point. But still… I do wonder.
I think one of the more unfortunate aspects of this decision was that I pretty much gave up sewing and design altogether once I enrolled in college. I had a job and could buy cute clothes at that point, and I just didn’t really have the time to spend hours hunched over my sewing machine like I did when I was an isolated homeschooled teenager.
So my passion, and this unique creative outlet, eventually drifted into a distant memory.
Last fall, in an effort to revive some of my former creativity as a therapeutic outlet, I started sewing again. My mother-in-law graciously gifted me her old sewing machine so I could get started, and just this past week, I went ahead and splurged on a fancy new sewing machine! This new machine has tons of fun bells and whistles, and I’m feeling super-inspired thinking about all the fun creations that are in my future.
Sitting behind a sewing machine again has felt like coming home. Not in a dramatic way—more like I finally gave myself permission to return to a part of myself I’d suppressed in order to follow “God’s calling.” Returning to sewing has felt like an essential piece of my reclaiming process.
High-control religions demand so much from us. Our time, our energy, our work life or family life—our entire future. I know many folks make choices about career or family or even what hobbies or interests they pursue based on influences from the religion they were indoctrinated into.
Once we’re out, these religion-influenced decisions are something to begin identifying, processing, and maybe even grieving. And for some of us, it might mean a return to some of those earliest longings that were suppressed before they could even fully evolve. For me, it’s been a return to sewing and fashion design.
If you feel like sharing, comment below: what’s something you’re returning to?
Just a thought—since God gave you thx gift and passion for fashion design, why wouldn’t you be serving humanity by doing it? Fashion is healing. The right outfit can boost someone’s confidence and help them get the right job, start a new chapter in life, meet new people. There’s nothing frivolous about art and beauty, even up high control religion may make us believe that. If you have a gift or talent it is because God gave it to you and put those dreams into your heart. We serve humanity by being true to ourselves
I would push back on this comment a bit by asking why god or service to humanity needs to be present in this discussion at all? Can’t it be enough to pursue an interest or talent simply because it’s something I want to do for myself?
I remember being very young and fascinated by a book about crystals and their properties and birthstones (like you, it was some early aughts kind of book). My father found me reading it and said it was demonic and Satan’s trickery. So I had to stop reading that. Today, after a long and painful deconstruction journey, I’m now a professional tarot reader.
I love that you were able to reclaim this early fascination ✨
This one deeply resonated with me. I wanted to be a biologist and work with wildlife most of my life, but the older I got and got deeper into the homeschool world, I thought my only option was to become a homeschool mom before the rapture happened. So I ended up getting a degree I never used and eventually found myself in overseas youth ministry, overworked, under resourced, and severely burned out and depressed. But after I started seeing a secular therapist (who was always very respectful of the beliefs I held at the time), I finally learned how to even access my own desires and found the courage to leave. Now I’m pursuing a degree in ecology and working with herps at a local museum and absolutely loving my life. There’s hope on the other side 🤍
Thank you for sharing! This is inspiring 🌻
I’m glad you shared this! What comes to mind for me is that as my son has gotten interested in paleontology, geology, and astronomy, I am getting to re-experience those interests that I had as a child but had to filter through young-Earth creationism to the point where they were really hard to engage with. Now I can just…read the books and marvel with my son as we discover it together.
I’ve loved going back and filling in some of the gaps in my education as well. It’s wonderful your son is able to experience science and learning in a totally different way than the repression you experienced in your childhood đź’›