Introducing Tirzah At Work + FREE EBOOK!
More women are working today and we're also staying longer in the workforce. More importantly, Christian women are working, and yet there is a very obvious lack of Scripturally sound career advice for young women today. In 2018, the median age for women to marry was 27.8, compared to age 20.2 in 1955! In 2019, for the first time since the Great Recession, women outnumbered men in the American workforce.
As a first generation immigrant, college graduate, law school graduate and attorney, because I have continually gone where no one in my family had gone before me, I never had immediate guidance. So, I sought out advice from successful people around me, networked, found mentors and read everything I could about being a successful woman in law and corporate America.
The world has a lot of resources and advice for career success for women, but as much as I tried to look for that information from Christian women, the little I could find was targeted towards entrepreneurs, women with side hustles and moms working from home. All of those are wonderful and needed, but it's a small fraction of women in the workplace today, especially when there is a generation of college-educated young women coming up in the workforce who are being shaped by the world's standards of gender equality, feminism, and becoming a #girlboss. It all sounds so good and I've bought into all that over the years.
But in the last few years, something changed for me. As I read the Bible more and asked God the hard questions, He began to teach me His way of living, including His way of working and living as a woman of God. As a result, my career and life ambitions began to feel like an ill-fitting second skin. What once motivated and drove me, now held less appeal.
Yet, I still felt like I was exactly where God needed me to be, that I had been brought to this profession for such a time as this. My education, the jobs I had - I knew they were all part of God’s plan for my life. But instead of staying on the path everyone else was on, I felt God calling me to lean out. To stay on the corporate ladder, but to do it differently, because there was a story God wanted to share through this generation of Christian women working and I was living this life like this for a purpose.
Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established. -Proverbs 16:3
Maybe a woman’s place was traditionally in the home, but for me today, it is at work. My place and work may change for me in season, but for now, I must be bring glory to God where He has me, and that is working full-time as a tax attorney for an accounting firm.
So, I've been trying to figure out what it looks like to be a Christian woman, wholeheartedly devoted to her faith and Biblical womanhood, yet called to work in the corporate world and in male-dominated professions.
As an attorney working in the tax/finance/accounting profession, I've tried to figure out for myself the answers to questions like:
Networking at open bar events when you're likely the only one sober an hour in
Finding mentors who understand your core life values and that your faith is more important than worldly success
How to dress professionally, modestly and maintain my femininity in professions that primarily dress in black and navy suits
Building personal and professional relationships with people whose life values and interests are very different from mine
Overcoming imposter syndrome as a first generation college graduate, attorney and working at big 4 accounting firm with Fortune 500 clients
Gaining confidence professionally and learning to speak up for myself, while staying humble and maintaining a quiet and meek spirit as instructed by the Bible
So much of this seems like a contradiction, an impossible oxymoron! Yet, I imagine many of you are in similar positions? Maybe you’re in college or maybe you’re working part/full-time. Most of you are not married, although some of you are. We're mostly all in a very similar age group. We're in this together, yet we have so little guidance on how to reconcile what we learn about Biblical womanhood with the life God has given us, which for many young women today does include a higher education and/or a career/work.
That is why we want to fill this gap with Truth by:
Featuring a work/career related article every Wednesday: Women Who Work Wednesdays
Sharing career tips and inspiration with you on our new Tirzah @ Work instagram page
We all work somehow and in some capacity - whether it's secular work, ministry work and/or raising littles in the home (or all of the above). So, let's talk about the hard questions of navigating our work and careers as women after God's own heart. We'll discuss issues like:
How to negotiate
Becoming better decision makers
Leadership
Managing our finances
Landing a first job and switching jobs
Overcoming impostor syndrome
Maintaining femininity in male-dominated professions
Climbing the corporate ladder God’s way
Learning how to speak up for ourselves at work
Gaining confidence in our work
Tips on making small talk
And so much more!
Women work. More importantly, Christian women work, so let's be a generation of women who work God's way, not the world's way.
For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. -2 Thes. 3:10-12
To celebrate the launch of Tirzah @ Work, I put together my top 29 pieces of career advice for twenty-something Christian women. Download your copy below:
Have a career-related question or article idea? Email us at TirzahMag[at]gmail.com.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Yelena is the founder and editor in chief Tirzah. Yelena works as an attorney in tax and in her spare time, she is working on her first book for unmarried twenty-something women in extended waiting seasons and running Tirzah. She has a passion for pointing young women to Christ, and enjoys reading, writing, traveling, and spending time with her family.