Recognizing a season shift from God starts with awareness, not certainty. In the summer of 2023 I was four years into a role I loved, and on an August walk I noticed I wasn't stretched. No vision for what was next. That awareness planted a seed. Over 18 months it grew through a small group that stirred buried dreams, months of wrestling and resistance, external signs accumulating, increasing friction at work, and a company picnic where I felt for the first time that I didn't belong. I was prepared to stay another year or three. Two weeks after Josh said he didn't want to live in Great Falls anymore, we were in Alaska. God prepares the heart long before the change happens. The pattern I've lived through multiple times: awareness, stirring, wrestling, surrender, external signs, waiting in faith, and the shift.
You can be aligned, growing, and producing real fruit, and still feel something shift. In the summer of 2023 I was four years into a role I loved. The culture fit. I was contributing in meaningful ways. And on an August walk at the park with my kids, I noticed something. I wasn't stretched. I had no vision for what was next. That quiet moment of awareness was the first sign. Not a crisis. Not desperation. Just a seed being planted.
This episode traces what happened over the 18 months that followed: a small group for entrepreneurs that stirred buried dreams, months of wrestling and resistance, the development of my brand clarity framework inside my day job, increasing workplace friction, a company picnic where I felt for the first time like I didn't belong, a commitment to stay until God released me, and a November Friday when Josh said he didn't want to live in Great Falls anymore. Two weeks later we were in Alaska. I map the pattern I've now lived through multiple times: awareness, stirring, wrestling and resistance, surrender and obedience, external signs, waiting in faith, and the shift.
- The first sign of a season shift is usually not desperation. It's a quiet awareness that you're comfortable but not growing, that there's no vision for what's next. Don't dismiss that feeling.
- God prepares the heart long before the change happens. Looking back, the seed that started my Alaska move was planted almost a year and a half before we left. The preparation was slow and it had time to grow.
- Stirring and resistance usually come together. When buried dreams surface, the instinct is to push them back down because you know what it will cost you. That wrestling is part of the process, not a reason to stop.
- Surrender is not passive waiting. It's a committed, active decision to stay fully invested in the current season until God releases you, no matter how clear it is that something new is coming.
- External signs accumulate on God's timeline, not yours. Closed doors, drifting relationships, a sense that you don't belong where you used to fit: these are worth paying attention to.
- When God is ready to move, he moves fast. My plan had been a careful, gradual transition. His plan was two weeks. The peace that came with the fast door told me it was him.
- You can know your time in a season is ending and still give that season everything. Those aren't in conflict. Full investment now and full trust in the next thing is the posture God honors.
How do you know when God is preparing you for a new season, not just restlessness?
The distinction usually shows itself through peace. Restlessness is scattered. It moves in different directions based on mood or circumstance. What I experienced was something more specific: a quiet awareness in August 2023, then a stirring that wouldn't go away no matter how hard I tried to suppress it, then a period of wrestling and resistance where I actively fought it.
It wasn't one big feeling or one dramatic moment. The seed was planted in August 2023. A small group stirred things up in the fall. Months of wrestling followed through 2024. External signs accumulated throughout the year. God tends to prepare the heart long before the change happens. If you're noticing a season shift, the preparation probably started earlier than you think.
Before he moves us, he prepares our heart for it. Long before that change ever happens, this stirring, this very first seed that was planted, was planted almost a year and a half before anything ever really happened. It was slow and it had time to grow.
Amy Dardis, Episode 19What are the signs that God is shifting your season?
I trace a pattern I've lived through more than once:
Looking back, they form a clear pattern. In the middle of it, they mostly feel like confusion, discomfort, and a lot of prayer.
How do you stay fully committed in a role when you sense God is calling you somewhere else?
At the company picnic in summer 2024, I felt for the first time that I didn't belong. I knew my time was coming to an end. My response wasn't to quietly disengage or start planning my exit. It was the opposite.
I dug in harder. I told my boss I was committed to seeing things through. I was dealing with severe anxiety at that point, physical anxiety attacks on a weekly basis. But my posture was: God has me here, I'm not leaving until he releases me.
It was full surrender. Not passive waiting, but an active choice to give the current season everything I had while trusting the timing to God. I'd made the mistake before of trying to control the exit on my own terms. This time I was determined to wait for his release, even if that took another year or three.
I understand that my time is coming to an end. I understand that God is doing something new. But until then, I will give this everything I've got. No matter how difficult, no matter how stressful, no matter how much anxiety I have, I will dig my heels in and commit to this.
Amy Dardis, Episode 19What does obedience look like when God calls you to something that makes no logical sense?
For me it looked like moving to Alaska in two weeks in December with six suitcases, no income, no housing, no community, and no plan beyond the conviction that God said go.
The original plan had been a careful one: build the new brand on the side, transition slowly, keep the stability as long as possible. God's plan was different. He asked me to leave what I knew and follow him, with no guarantee of how it would work out. The same calling Abraham received. "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you"- Genesis 12:1
What made it possible was the accumulation of everything that had happened over the 18 months before. The awareness, the stirring, the resistance, the surrender, the external signs, the waiting. By the time the door opened through Josh's words on a Friday morning, I had been prepared for it even if the timing was still startling.
The lesson: God doesn't open doors through your effort. He opens them when he's ready and when you're ready. Your job is to stay obedient, keep showing up, and wait for him to move. When he does, the peace will be there in a way it wasn't before.
When God is ready for you to move, He will move. Like He will open doors, not you. And that's one of the biggest lessons I've learned along the way, mainly from doing it wrong so many times.
Amy Dardis, Episode 19Resources mentioned
- Ep 18 — Why Contribution Determines Whether Employees Stay or Leave — The previous episode: what it looks like when a season of contribution ends
- Ep 6 — The Origin of Clear Authentic Brands and What Authenticity Really Means — Amy's surrender narrative and the story behind CAB
- Free Hiring Resources
Full transcript
I'm your host, Amy Dardis. And in today's episode, we are talking about how to know when a shift is getting ready to happen. This is relevant for anyone, but I am sharing what it looked like for me through the lens of entrepreneurship. If I've learned anything, it's that God is always at work, whether we can see it or sense it or not. It's not so much about knowing the plan, but understanding when God is calling you to something new, understanding when it's time to step out in faith and being obedient to that. It's learning to recognize when God is shifting you from one season to the next, whether that's from employee to entrepreneur, entrepreneur to employee, or from one role to another. The shift has happened many times throughout my life. And the more times I've gone through it, the more I've learned to recognize God's hand in it, the more I've learned to hear his voice through it, the more I've learned to trust the process. Although it's still a struggle every time.
Back in summer of 2023, I was an employee on a leadership team, working full-time for an organization I loved. I'd been there four years doing work I loved. I was aligned, in roles I had the capacity for, contributing in a meaningful way. I had just thoroughly enjoyed the last few years of my life. And I remember it was summertime, kids were home, and I was thankful to be working from home. At the end of my workday I would take my kids to the park and they would ride their bikes and I would walk and listen to music and pray and get some steps in.
And I remember it was August and I was walking and I just all of a sudden became aware that I was very comfortable. I became aware that I wasn't feeling stretched in any way. I wasn't feeling like I had incredible purpose or passion or the same amount that had been fueling me these last few years. And I realized that at that moment in time, I had no vision for what was next. I felt a little lost, a little stagnant, a little unsure. Not in a desperate way, not crying out for vision. It was just like: I'm comfortable. And this feels weird. This feels off. I'm wondering what's next, God. Just a conversation. The first time it became a thought in my mind. And it was a thought that didn't really go away.
Not even a month later, I was at church with my husband going to get our kids. Some friends of ours who were also business owners came up and said, hey, we want to start a small group for entrepreneurs and business owners. And immediately in my spirit I was like, yes. Normally I would talk to my husband first and not commit to something that big. But as soon as he asked, my spirit said, yes, like God said say yes. I looked at my husband and said, I hope you want to do this because we're doing it. And so we started this business group for other business owners and entrepreneurs. We hosted it at our house. We talked about business topics, faith, God's leading and direction. And very, very quickly, I was feeling a stirring. All of these ideas and this passion and these thoughts coming to the surface. I was getting emotional and excited. Like this thing had been dormant inside of me for a while. Now it's bubbling back up to the surface. I knew this feeling, these dreams, these desires, because I'd had them for years. I'd thought they were dead and buried.
And then I start wrestling. Group becomes this emotional, raw experience. Every time I'm done I feel like: what is this? I don't have peace about this, but I feel like I am trying to wrestle with it. The first thing was just this awareness. The next thing was this stirring. And then we move into these internal signs of wrestling and resistance, because that's what I was doing. Wrestling with these dreams, wrestling with this timing and resisting it. I wanted to put it back to bed. I wanted to rebury it because I knew these things coming to the surface were going to threaten the comfort and the security and the stability of what I had going on. I didn't want that. I wanted to stay content. I tried to fight it.
And one of the group members was like, what if you just do something about this? What if instead of trying to fight it, you look at what doing something about this would look like? I had all these ideas, these thoughts, no plan. I just had energy welling up inside of me. Thoughts, emotions, and no outlet. So I surrendered to this idea that God was asking me to do something. He was asking me to take action and address what was coming to the surface. And so I realized, okay, God is doing this. This isn't my own selfish ambition. This isn't my plan. This plan doesn't make sense. But I'm going to accept that this is God. And if it's God, I need to obey, I need to take action. And so in the fall of 2023, I started a YouTube channel. No plan, just an outlet. I would turn on my webcam, have an idea of what I wanted to say, record it in one shot with no editing, trim the beginning and end, and post it. It was just an outlet to get these ideas out.
That carried me into 2024. And then I started seeing these other external signs happening in my life. At the time I saw no connection to any of it. Things like my primary care provider, who I loved and was very attached to, fired me because I missed a follow-up appointment. I was so busy at work I couldn't put myself first. I didn't find a new doctor I felt the same connection with. And then there were meetings, like manager meetings or conferences or travel between two branches, things I couldn't control because that schedule was affecting other people's schedules. Month after month I kept missing all of these commitments. I felt bad, but I didn't know why it kept happening. It was just completely beyond my control.
And at work, things were starting to happen. I was listening to more books, meditating on things, getting more active in my business again because of these ideas. The clarity, alignment, accountability framework was starting to come to life. I was testing it with clients in the agency, going back to people I knew well and saying, hey, I have this new thing I'm testing out, a new way of telling a brand story. I'd do it for free, just testing the theory. And I was finding success with it, being exhilarated by it. The flame was getting bigger.
I was implementing some of these ideas at work too. We were doing personality tests on everybody, intentional team building, looking at roles. I was realizing this is my unique gifting, I want to do more of this because I want to contribute in a more impactful way. My boss supported it, helped me open these doors. But as I was doing it, I was facing more and more opposition and tension at work, not from my boss, but from coworkers. Here I was trying to step into a different, more focused role, and there was tension from that. What? But you're the marketing person, you're in this box. And now you have these ideas about other things.
I pushed through it, and we gained a lot of traction. We were doing intentional team building sessions, and every single time we presented this idea to every branch or department, there was tons of hesitation, resistance, uncertainty. And then we would go do it, and they would just have a blast. They would get to know each other better, learn things they didn't know. There would be tons of laughter. It was an incredible success. But I was still dealing with this opposition and resistance, and it was making work more and more stressful.
And there were some relationships in my life that were slowly getting more and more distant because life was getting busier. More of a disconnect. And then it was summer of 2024, and we had this big company picnic. All the people and their families. And I remember being there with all these people I'd spent the last four and a half years of my life with and feeling like I didn't belong. Oh wow, like this isn't where I'm supposed to be. That was the first time I recognized it for sure. Okay, God is preparing me to leave at some point. But it wasn't like I was going to go quit. If anything, it was the opposite. I'm recognizing I don't belong. I recognize there's all this tension and opposition. But if God has called me to this, I'm going to surrender this, I'm going to let him be in control. I will be here as long as he wants me here.
I understood that my time was coming to an end. I understood that God was doing something new. I understood that after this time ends, I want to go back to being an entrepreneur. I understood that there are these ideas and this framework and this calling and this purpose that needs to happen within the world of being an entrepreneur. But until then, I will give this everything I've got. No matter how difficult, no matter how stressful, no matter how much anxiety I have, I will dig my heels in and commit. I was having severe anxiety, literally dealing with physical anxiety attacks on a weekly basis. But I was like, nope, I'm in this. God has me here. I am not leaving until he tells me otherwise.
The stress and the pressure and the anxiety and the friction continued to build, but so did my resolve and my commitment to staying. I'd had tons of conversations with my husband. I had conversations with my boss about letting him know I'm in this, I know it's hard, I understand what I'm dealing with and I'm willing to work through it. I thought I could break through this ceiling while staying in the same organization. I was really trying to evolve through it and stay. There was a lot of good things going on, a lot of stability, security, comfort, reliability. It had been a huge blessing in so many ways, and I didn't want to throw it away.
In the summer of 2024, I'd been visiting family and said, I don't have a vision for my role or for my life past the end of the year. For some reason I get this sense, this feeling, this prompting that I won't be there past the end of the year. And they were like, do you think you're going to leave? And I was like, no, I'm not going to leave. Like, no. I don't know why I have this feeling, but that's ludicrous. That is crazy. But I would never do that to my husband, to my family, to my boss. That is just crazy talk.
I got into the fall, recognized my time there was coming to an end, but honestly thinking the end was coming within one to three years. At minimum another year there. And no matter how hard it was going to be, I was going to stick it out and push through. And that was me surrendering, right? Surrendering to God's plan. God, if you have me here, I will be here for as long as you want me, no matter how hard it is. This is your plan. You are in control. I have made too many mistakes doing this too many times before where I tried to take things under my control. I'm not going to do that. Full surrender for whatever it is, in the midst of opposition, adversity, stress and tension.
I remember praying and praying, leading a different small group at the time. I remember telling them, this season is so stressful. I'm literally hanging on by a thread and I am holding on to God through it all. I feel like I'm waiting for something. I don't know what it is, but I feel like it's coming. It's coming soon. I just have no idea what it is.
And then it was November 2024. I remember it was a Friday morning, and my husband came into the room and said, I don't think I want to live in Great Falls anymore. I was like, okay, well, that's all right. We don't have to stay here forever. I only have one to three years left with my current position, we can definitely plan on moving somewhere else after that. Where do you think you want to go? He didn't know at the time. He left and I got on the computer and was googling different places in Montana to live because there was no way we would ever leave the state. I'm looking at different cities and towns and just nothing's feeling right.
He comes back 45 minutes later and he says, I think I want to move to Alaska. There are some ties to Alaska. This wasn't just completely far-fetched. He'd been visiting for the last eight years. I have family there. It was there was a reason. I was like, okay, let me think about that. I get online and start looking at houses. And there's peace there. I'm looking at these houses, and God is like, this is where I want you to move. I want you to move to Alaska. And it was right then and there, this most clear prompting, this most clear direction, full peace, full clarity, God is calling us to Alaska. We're going to move to Alaska. At the time we were still thinking summer 2025 or a year later. Just a very clear: okay, we're going.
And two weeks later, 15 days later, we landed in Alaska with our family and our dogs and our six suitcases. In two weeks from the moment the thought was planted, we were gone. When I said I was waiting for God to release me, he released me. I went in to my boss and said, I have loved working for you for the last five years. You're the best boss I have ever had. I have nothing but the utmost respect for you. But the most important thing in my life is honoring God and being obedient because he is Lord and Savior over my life. He is who directs my steps. And he's calling us to go to Alaska. And I'm giving you my resignation.
We moved in December, four hours of daylight. Who moves to Alaska then? We went without a plan. My plan had been to phase out and slowly build a new brand on the side and just transition smoothly. And God was saying, leave what you know and follow me. Leave what you know and obey. This is not the first time that this has happened. Whether it was moving from employee to entrepreneur, or entrepreneur to employee, it was followed by these different signs: this awareness, this stirring, these internal signs of wrestling and resistance, this surrender and obedience and being willing to take action. External signs, affirming it and making a way for some doors to open and some doors to close. And then eventually just waiting in faith, in full surrender, not controlling the situation, waiting for God to move and to act, continuing to serve and show up to the best of my ability until he made it clear that it was time to act, until he made it clear it was time to go. And then the actual shift happening. And then the change taking place.
What happens post-change is its own story. It's not like we make a change and everything is good because we've just left one thing and walked into something new. It's like when the Israelites leave Egypt, well, that's not the end of the story. So it's important to recognize the events and the signs that happen to prepare us and let us know: this is God. This is God prompting me. This is God leading me. This is God acting and moving on my behalf. Not my plan, not my will, not me trying to control it. It is surrender, it is obedience, it is faith. It is trusting that God is in control and we're stepping into something new, even though we don't know what we're stepping into, even though it very often doesn't make sense and the timing doesn't make sense.
But before he moves us, he prepares our heart for it. Long before that change ever happens. For me, this stirring, this very first seed that was planted, was planted almost a year and a half before anything ever really happened. It was slow and it had time to grow. I had time to process and adjust and pray through it and be encouraged and be affirmed and start to accept it and start to trust it. I wasn't trying to manipulate the situation. I wasn't trying to call the shots. I was just trying to be obedient to wherever it was. But when God is ready for you to move, he will move. He will open doors, not you. And that's one of the biggest lessons I've learned along the way, mainly from doing it wrong so many times. So as always, you can learn more at clearauthenticbrands.com. That's all for this episode. See you in the next one.