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before kings

What new highways, indeed. Reading through Abby’s last post I was reminded of the feeling of adventure and unknown with which we left people we loved and a house we loved in order join the over 100,000 who relocate to Houston every year seeking new opportunities. Houston is the city where we met in college over two decades ago, and is full of not just good memories, but all the educational and cultural amenities you could expect from the fourth largest city in the country. But the relocation also promised what appeared to be professional advancement. My new Houston job had an investment philosophy and tax-centric approach to advice that fit well with where my career was going.

So I thought, initially. It did not go as planned.

For reasons I’m not at liberty to disclose, in my second week of the new position it was clear this new job was something I needed to make a quick exit from. As I begrudged every day of a gridlocked commute into my miserable routine and prepared for a number of job interviews, some of which ended in rejection, Abby’s most frequent refrain of encouragement was to tell me that I would “stand before kings.” She was quoting a phrase from Proverbs 22:29:

Do you see a man skillful in his work?
    He will stand before kings;
    he will not stand before obscure men.

Recently I was struck by how well this proverb fits my chosen career. The main reason I walked away from the lucrative software development world was because I wanted to interact face-to-face with clients, or stand before “kings,” and help them make better portfolio, tax, and consumer decisions. Unfortunately, my new role did not line up with my career trajectory.

So many things about our first few months back in Texas were overshadowed by the uncertainty about the next steps for the House of Gjertsen. We sold our New Bern house in only six weeks, but our celebration was muted and we did not start looking for a house in Houston as we had originally planned. There were weeks when we thought it was more likely that we might relocate again. Rather than trying to lay down roots, we were trying to avoid commitments here. It was a discouraging and anxious time for us all. I hope our readers can understand now the reason for our blog silence since the move.

Late in April, I was able to quit my first Houston job and accept an offer to be a Wealth Strategist for another firm in Houston, whose clients are high and ultra-high net worth families. For those unfamiliar with this lingo, it basically means that they are “kings.”

As I close the door on a unexpectedly stressful season in my life, I don’t exactly wish for an undo button. As it was after a difficult foray into foster care, an empty journey with adopting embryos, and a season of special needs parenting and the loss that followed, these past few months have been filled with faith trials in which God has provided grace sufficient for the journey. Starting tomorrow morning, our Houston adventure will officially restart from a professional standpoint, and by God’s provision, John Gjertsen, CFA, CFP®, EA will stand before kings.

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4 thoughts on “before kings”

  1. In finance, there is a ubiquitous and foundational concept known as the time value of money, which relates the value of present dollars to the value of future dollars with an annualized factor called the discount rate. Using a discount rate on a sequence of cash flows, it is possible to create a net present value (NPV). If the rate of return an investor expects, called the internal rate of return (IRR), is used as the discount rate for a series of cash flows, the NPV calculation produces the immediate cash flow that the investor would find equivalent as an alternative to the series of cash flows. If inflation, a risk-free rate of return, or any other rate different from the IRR is used to discount cash flows, the resulting NPV is not meaningful in relationship to the NPV of a different project or scenario.

  2. Thankful you are out of that situation and looking forward to a new and prayerfully happy and successful job! Praying for you guys!

  3. This post was a great encouragement to me. I deeply appreciate that your faith is not an abstract concept divorced from the reality of your work. While I don’t know how your current position will develop,I do know God honor’s faithfulness and truth in his children.
    “Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
    And lean not on your own understanding;
    In all your ways acknowledge Him,
    And He shall direct[a] your paths.” https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs+3%3A5-6&version=NKJV

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