The Job Hunt, Influencing Off Camera, and Starting 2025 *Needing* God

An unpolished, open-hearted chat about why being in an “It’s not optional God—I need you to bring breakthrough” position may not be our favourite way to start the year but it’s pure, honest, and pleasing to God who loves when we fully rely on him. 

Prayer: Lord, may this be a year of fulfilled hopes and beautiful fruit bloomed from the pruning you’ve been doing in our hearts. Amen.

Listen to You Are You Podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts or read the transcript below.

Hello, my friends.

So.

It’s about an hour past the end of my workday. I’ve had a quick soup and finished up a small task: updating my You Are You podcast Instagram bio. As I was cleaning up my story highlights, I realized I hadn’t touched some of them—I don’t think—in about four years. Some of them just had a single story of something random, like an external podcast episode I’d listened to years ago. Usually, I’m pretty on top of organizing things, so the fact that keeping my social profiles super polished hasn’t been a top priority made me think.

It’s not that I don’t care about doing a good job with what I create. I deeply care. But as a creative person—I imagine you can relate—we want to create something meaningful. Of course, we can’t only create when we’re feeling 100 percent inspired. There’s merit in practicing and polishing our craft. But sometimes, if we’re in a moment (not saying season because season feels really long, though sometimes moments do turn into seasons, but I digress) where we know there’s a whole lot of processing that needs to be done with God before clarity comes… we focus on the processing time with God and not the polish.

When it comes to creating, self-expression is key, but self-awareness is important too. Over the past two and a half years, I’ve moved around a lot. I left Hong Kong in the middle of 2022, went to Waterloo for a year, then Taipei for six months, back to Waterloo for six months, and am now entering my seventh month in Toronto. All to say… my Hong Kong life feels like so long ago.

Back then, I was in a bit of a lifestyle media influencer bubble in the middle of a city where glamour is a top priority. I always knew moving back to Canada would make me more casual and understated—but now that I’m back, those thoughts seem so surface level. I love my home country, but culturally there are some serious economic challenges. In Hong Kong, especially in expat circles where people literally moved to the city because of well-paying jobs and had lots of play money, coming to Canada where the job market is tough has been a real culture shock. And honestly, a bit of a blow to the ego. When there are so many qualified people looking for work, what makes an application stand out?

I believe every job I’ve ever gotten has had God’s favour. I’ve never done the role before, but the hiring manager was confident to hire me. Today, I looked up who successfully landed two of the roles I interviewed for back in the fall and was bummed (lol) to see that the people who were hired were indeed more qualified than me for the role.

So because I was bummed, I was tempted to be fleshly. I wanted to zone out to a show and eat junk food. But praise God, today is also the first day of my fast, so both of those things were out. There is something so special about fasting though—we often sense God’s Spirit extra strongly helping us out, right? So I made a green tea, worshipped, stared out the window—and then just prayed.

Sometimes we go to God needing to talk. Like we know we have many things we want answers to and want to talk about them! Other times, we can barely find the words. Today, I just repeated, “God, I need your help,” over and over for a while. It felt more intimate and powerful than anything I’ve prayed in a while because I was just so surrendered. In a “Literally, God, I need your help because trying my best and praying over it for months hasn’t resulted in any breakthroughs yet. But breakthrough will come in your timing, I believe it, and so I wait on you. Lead my steps. Guide my thoughts” way.

I also wanted to say that in addition to cleaning up my story highlights, I updated my Instagram bio. When the You Are You podcast first started, my tagline was something like “Let’s celebrate our God-given design, pursue our kingdom calling, and love God 100%.” The reality is that this podcast is now more of a solo testimony podcast—and an off-camera one at that—which feels true to where I am and what I can handle at the moment. And I think that this is where my priority needs to be.

There are so many podcasts out there now, and if you’ve tuned in to listen, I am grateful! I so believe in the power of the testimony—God calls us to testify. And if my testimonies encourage your faith and you to seek God more wholeheartedly, I praise the Lord. There is much that could be done to further improve this podcast. But with a number of changes in my life right now, I just don’t have the capacity—but I still want to share and testify, thankful that some of you do write in and say this is one of your favourites to listen to. Please do let me know what you think—I love meeting new sisters in Christ and connecting on areas we’re praying over.

Something else that I’m noticing for 2025 is my desire to be less on camera. I wonder: is this just because I have a lot of personal things going on? At some point this year, will I want to be more on camera? While I definitely desire to improve my speaking and presenting skills, I love writing—and have learned I love off-camera podcasting. I’m growing in my desire and love for creating audio prayers and affirmations. When I podcast, write, and record audio, most of the time, I’m in glasses and sweats just raw praying and typing out my heart thoughts. The thought of getting glammed up and “presenting” my podcast… not that there’s anything wrong with this, it’s just not my preferred style. So the new podcast bio reads, “(Mostly) a solo testimony pod. Life lessons and new dreams after I finally, totally surrendered to God at 30.” This may change again, but today this feels very “where I am right now.”

The past few months have been very pruning and good for removing self-reliance and pride. I think I generally am cognizant that I need God and that my life is better when I’m following Him rather than planning my own way. But sometimes I get too fleshly, e.g. I watch too much TV when I’m stressed when I know I should be seeking Him about the issue. Just old habits that need to go because I want to mature. So even though it’s challenging right now, I know I have a lot to be thankful for. There is a purpose to God's pruning process—and he only does it, with love, because it's good for us.

If you are going through something challenging right now, I hope this sharing has been helpful, and may we both learn from my precious mother, who regularly reminds me that no matter how long I have been waiting on the Lord, I need to live with expectation that God has something good coming.

Let’s remember what King David said and how he cried out to the Lord in his time of need:

"Hear my voice when I call, Lord; be merciful to me and answer me. I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord." (Psalm 27:7, 13, 14)

Amen.

Love you, friends. Speak soon.