A Different Story to Believe
When I was sixteen, I wanted a job wrapping gifts at Lewis’s Department Store.
Even now, I can see the counter where you would take your purchase and hand it to the lady behind it. There were colorful wrapping papers, ribbons, scissors, and tape, everything she needed to turn a purchased item into something beautiful. And when she finished, there was that oval gold sticker with the cursive L, the finishing touch that told you where the gift had come from. Before you ever opened the wrapping, you knew something special was waiting underneath.
For that small window of a short season, it was my dream job. I could picture myself behind that counter, accepting someone’s purchase, turning toward the supplies, and working a little magic of my own.
Somehow, I learned there was an opening, and I called and scheduled an interview. I had never had a job before or sat through an interview, but somewhere inside me was enough hope to make the call.
When I told my mother, I would have loved to hear that she was proud of me for taking the initiative. Maybe we could have practiced a few interview questions together, or she could have wished me luck and helped me believe I had a chance. Instead, she told me they weren’t going to hire me. I didn’t have the right last name. I didn’t live in the right neighborhood. I wasn’t part of that world.
I share this with tenderness toward my mother. I had good parents, and I am grateful for them. My mother carried her own brokenness, fear, and rejection, and I believe she was trying to protect me from being hurt. But sometimes the words we offer as protection become the boundaries someone else learns to live within.
I went to the interview anyway. I don’t remember what I wore or the questions I was asked. I don’t remember much about the woman behind the desk, although I think she must have been kind. I believe I would have remembered otherwise.
What I remember is that I never heard back, and in the quiet that followed, a story began to settle into my heart: My mother was right.
Looking back now as a business owner, I can see possibilities I couldn’t see at sixteen. I had no work experience, no interview experience, and no experience making the elaborate bows that were part of those beautiful packages. I had probably wrapped a few Christmas presents for my family, but I still had plenty to learn. I don’t know why I wasn’t hired. What I can see now is that the outcome was never proof that my last name or neighborhood made me unworthy of the opportunity.
At sixteen, though, I didn’t know how to separate needing preparation from not belonging. I took one unanswered interview and folded it into a much larger story about what was possible for someone like me.
As I wrote about this memory in my journal recently, I began to understand more clearly what I want for the women and girls who walk through the doors of Amadea.
I want them to have someone who can see possibility in them while they are still learning to see it themselves. Someone who will listen when they describe a dream, help them discover what they need to learn, and encourage them to take the next step. Someone who can remind them, when disappointment comes, that there is still more ahead.
Encouragement matters, and so does preparation. Sometimes hope takes the shape of practicing an interview, learning a skill, trying something unfamiliar, or having a patient person beside you while you try again.
That is part of the purpose I am finding words for: helping women and girls know they are loved by God, recognize the gifts He has placed within them, and grow in the confidence and skills to pursue the life He created them for.
My own story is still being written. I am still learning to recognize the old beliefs that try to follow me into new places, and I am still discovering what becomes possible when I stop letting those beliefs make my decisions.
Through Amadea, I want to help other women and girls do the same. I want them to know they are already beloved, even while they are learning, healing, and beginning again. Their past may have shaped their story, but there are pages still waiting to be written.
My hope is that Amadea becomes a place where they find the encouragement, preparation, and companionship to pick up their pens again, trusting that God is still at work in their lives and that there is more ahead than they have been able to see.
