I Was Made for Success

By Heather Lohmolder

Director and Chair, Business Administration Program 

If you had asked me as a high schooler what I thought my future would look like, I probably would have told you that I was going to get married, have three kids, build a successful career, and, essentially, have a perfect life. I was always self-motived, so I thought that if I continued to do the right thing, performed well, and followed God, my life would be happy and fulfilling. But I find myself looking back on the last twenty years of my life and seeing a lot of brokenness. It seems ironic to claim that I was made for success, but, through all of my personal failure and hardship, I’ve learned that success has much more to do with God refining my heart and character than Him giving me what I thought would make me happy.

I was the kind of kid who always tried to win awards, achieve my goals, and do everything right. I was born in Richland, Washington, where my dad worked at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory as an engineer, and my mom taught high school Home Economics until she had kids and later opened a home daycare. They were loving and supportive parents. My dad was a quiet man of consistency and integrity with an incredible knack for history and trivia. He always valued his daughters and was fully invested in being a good dad; packing our lunches, driving us to music lessons, attending all of our sporting events, and encouraging us to do well in school. My mom was a natural teacher. She would bring vocabulary quizzes that she pulled from Reader’s Digest Magazine to the dinner table so that we could improve our vocab while we ate. Before podcasts were ever invented, she blared books on tape in the house so that we could expand our minds while we did chores. From both of my parents, I learned the value of hard work, investing in my community, and being frugal; in our household, we heard the phrase, “A penny saved is a penny earned,” all the time. But somewhere along the way, I picked up the message that the more I performed, the more I achieved, and the better I did, the more I would be loved. That lie permeated everything I did, including my relationship with God.        

In high school, I was the quintessential overachiever. I joined every activity I could, and I always wanted to succeed at everything I took on. I was the yearbook editor, I was Key Club president, I was in a lot of music groups, and I was always trying to push myself to improve.  As a result, I received a lot of accolades, earned good grades, and won competitions. My whole life revolved around my accomplishments, which turned out to be a disillusioning reality. At the time, I didn’t realize that all this early success wasn’t preparing me to deal with major life failures in the future.

In college, I continued to focus on achievement and accomplishment. I went to a small Christian college where I double majored in Business and Music. I also threw myself into different events and activities. During my freshman year, I was selected to be part of a music group that traveled to different camps and churches where we would sing and promote our college. It was through that experience I discovered my love for promotion and marketing. I loved being able to go out and share about an institution that I really cared about.

I found myself being drawn to marketing; I loved my classes, I loved learning about business, and I realized that God had given me gifts and skills in those areas. Having grown up in the church, I valued the concept of serving God with my career, and I realized that God does not call everyone to be pastors or missionaries, He calls people to be His salt and light in the world in different ways, including business. I had the opportunity to develop the talents He had given me while still serving Him, and I was eager to find that balance. 

After graduating from college in 1999, I got married and, shortly after, we moved to San Diego where I got my first job in marketing. After working for a couple of years, I went on to earn my Master of Arts in Business. My plan was to work hard at my education and career then take time off to be a mom, pour into my kids, and invest in them as a legacy that would outlast me. Being a wife and mom was my biggest dream. 

In college and in the early years of my career, I also dreamed about working in academia, but as my career progressed, I was so busy with my jobs and enjoyed what I was doing so much that I put that dream on the backburner. Professionally, I found myself aligning with brands that I admired. I took a position on the corporate marketing team for PETCO Animal Supplies, where I wound up working for five years.

“There was a clear connection between me saying, ‘God, you're in charge, I surrender,’ and all of the current blessings in my life.”

- Heather Lohmolder

While working at PETCO, I was able to maintain my pace and drive for success until I found myself divorced at the age of twenty-seven. My drive to succeed and to achieve rather than focusing on the needs of my husband contributed to him walking away from our marriage. In hindsight the warning signs were obvious, but, in my ever-focused attempt to achieve my next accomplishment, I missed many clues that our marriage was failing. Being someone who had always succeeded at everything, our divorce left me feeling like a broken failure.

I was inexperienced with failure, and I wasn’t able to see how my actions had contributed to the breakdown of my marriage. At the time, I thought that I had done everything right, so I became very angry with God. How could He have let this happen? I had performed well and yet I hadn’t succeeded. I had done what I thought He wanted me to do but there I was: divorced. I wish I could say that experience drew me closer to God, but I went through the next several years angrily distancing myself from Him. 

Having experienced what felt like the biggest failure of my life, I struggled with shame, regret, and aimlessness, and I was trying to navigate all of it without God. I spent many difficult years grasping for an identity when my ideas of success had fallen apart. Seven years after my divorce, I hit my breaking point. I remember lying on the ground in my bedroom and just saying, "I don't want to lead anymore. I want You to lead, God. You're in control of my life. You have a better plan than I do for my life. I surrender." And I really did. I recommitted my life to God, began the healing process with Him, and, three months later, He completely changed my life. 

At that time, I was working on the corporate marketing team for Jack in the Box restaurants. Out of the blue, just three months after recommitting my life to God, I was offered the opportunity to relocate my job with Jack in the Box to Portland, Oregon. It was the change that I needed, so, I packed up my life in California. There was a clear connection between me saying, "God, you're in charge, I surrender,” and all of the current blessings in my life. In August of 2011, I moved to Portland, Oregon, joined a local church, and soon met the man who would later become my husband.

After marrying again in my mid-thirties, I began to dream again about being a mom. My husband already had three older kids, and he knew I had always wanted kids, so we tried to start a family. Unfortunately, our efforts were met with years of infertility issues and multiple miscarriages. It was devastating. I had worked incredibly hard at my career, and yet it all seemed futile when I couldn’t have what I wanted most. Once again, I was asking God why He was allowing this to happen. I always tried to do the right thing, I worked hard, and I tried to follow Him where He was leading. I didn’t understand why God would allow those things to happen to me. I was failing. Again. 

I was really low during those years of multiple miscarriages, wondering what God had planned for me. I couldn’t understand why my plan to redeem the “perfect” life I’d always envisioned wasn’t working. Not only was I struggling to become a mother, but the professional success I had worked so hard to achieve felt unfulfilling and meaningless. Yes, I had climbed to a respectable level in my career, but there was, and always would be, someone much more successful. Worst of all, by putting my career success ahead of relationships, I had waited too long to have kids.

I struggled with these realities often. It was during one of those low moments that I turned to God and said “God, I know You’re all-powerful and could choose to bless me with kids, but You’ve chosen not to, and I accept that. Your plan for my life is better than my plan. You’re in control of my life and future. Guide my steps and help me to see what Your will is for me.” It sounds easy in writing, but it was—and still sometimes is—a big struggle to surrender those desires to God.

Shortly after, I got a text from a friend of mine who told me about a faculty role at Multnomah University. When I saw the job description, I was reminded of that dream of mine from almost twenty years ago to work in academia and instantly knew I would love the position. At that point, I had twenty years of business education and experience under my belt, which I felt I could bring to the classroom and share with students. At Multnomah, I was presented the opportunity to return to a Christian college, similar to the one I attended, where I could not only teach but I could invest in the lives of students. 

As a faculty member teaching business, I have the opportunity to use the wisdom that I've gained while remembering the perspective of being a young college student. I help to shape a business program that offers hands-on learning opportunities and real-world experiences. Multnomah also has small class sizes, so I am able to form relationships with students on a personal level. I love meeting with students one-on-one to hear about their hopes and dreams for their career, what their gifts are, and where they think they can be used to further God's kingdom. Along with my step kids, my Multnomah University students have become my “kids”, now. Sure, they’re not biologically my children, but I get to spend my days investing in their development. I get to come alongside Multnomah students and help them develop the gifts, plans, and talents they already have. I do not consider myself the planter or originator, but rather someone who cultivates and makes things better.

In the same way, I try to leave every organization a little better than when I got there. As the Director and Chair of the Business Program here at Multnomah, I strive to build an even better Business Program than when I was hired with students who are prepared to go out and make a difference in the world. I work hard for that and I strive for excellence. But something that I’ve learned over the years and through every season of my life—from the kid trying to do everything right, to the overachieving high-schooler, to the traveling college student, to the broken-hearted divorcee, to the successful businesswoman, to the mother with no children—is that “success” in God’s eyes is very different from my own ideas of what it meant to be successful. 

Reading the story of Mary and Martha in the book of Luke, I have always identified with Martha: the one concerned with doing things for Jesus and earning His love through service. But Mary sits at Jesus’s feet, and Jesus clearly says that Mary has chosen what is better. What I’ve learned through the struggles of my life and the progression of my career is that God doesn’t care about the things we often occupy ourselves with. He doesn’t care about titles, He doesn’t care about awards, and no amount of hard work will win His love. Seeking the next professional title can be invigorating, but it isn’t fully satisfying; once you achieve one level, you’ll just want to get to the next and the next and the next. Career milestones won’t make you happy in the end. When things are tough in life—when you’re going through a divorce or you’re suffering from a miscarriage or you feel like you’ve gotten off track in life—it’s God who gives meaning, identity, and presence. Mary knew that, and she rightly sat at Jesus’s feet. 

When it comes to “success,” everyone gets to choose their own yardstick to measure. For you, success might be earning money or becoming a parent or graduating with high honors, but in God's economy, success is completely different, and I would argue, far better. To God, success happens when we submit to His will for our lives and enjoy the journey of getting to know Him along the way. Success happens when we surrender. Surrender is difficult and seems counterintuitive to success in corporate America, which is all about climbing. But some of the absolute best things in my life have happened almost immediately after I surrendered my will to God’s and said, “God, you’re in charge. I want Your will (not mine) to be done.” It was in those seasons that I learned to love and be loved by God and to let Him take care of the details of my life.  

As I look back, I'm glad that my life hasn't been easy all the time and that things didn’t turn out the way I expected, because it forced me to surrender my idea of my own achievements and hand over my identity to God. My early, uninterrupted successes inevitably lead me to disillusionment and disappointment when confronted with hardship. But God used that hardship to transform me and, in time, my vision of success became less about me and more about others. The lessons I’ve learned through my own brokenness and failures have given me empathy and they've helped me to understand what people are going through so I can walk with them. My success is my ability to see those around me as God sees them and to share His love by investing in them.

I know now, that regardless of what I achieve, how I perform, or how well I do, I am loved. I was made to sit at His feet, in His presence, and surrender to His will as He shapes me to look more like Him. Through my struggles, I found that God actually uses the hard points of life to draw me closer to Him. Through my personal feelings of failure, He continues to teach me what it actually means to succeed. While I still sometimes wrestle with a drive for worldly success, I know that God cares more about transforming my mind, heart, and character than about me moving up in my career, raising children, or having a perfect past. I’ve experienced a lot of brokenness, and pain, and my younger self, who imagined a picture-perfect future full of achievements, might look on my life and see it as a failure. But I know that I was made to succeed. God said that His greatest commandments are to love the Lord your God and to love your neighbor as yourself. That is His measure of a successful life, and that is what I was made for.