It was about a year ago this month that I realized things were not going the way I had anticipated in my role as President of the Wake Forest Area Chamber.

The toxic staff behavior, coupled with a completely dysfunctional board, had me in a place emotionally where I had not been in a long, long time.

Flashback to early 2025 when I interviewed with the board for the role of Chamber President. I prayed so hard about getting that position.

I reminded God that this position was everything I had been training for my entire career.

Nonprofit membership organization.

Check.

Community-based group that promotes the town I dearly love.

Check.

The icing on the cake?

A foundation that promotes financial literacy, much in the same way my very first nonprofit job did when I worked at Junior Achievement.

And with all the trauma the Chamber had experienced and the lack of board training, I thought I would be like Mel Gibson in The Patriot and ride in to save the place.

And lo and behold, God answered my prayers. I was named President of the Chamber in early 2025.

Now, fast-forward to a year ago, and who would have known the valley I was walking through was only going to get deeper and darker?

A friend and mentor asked me a great question when I was at my lowest around October.

“Jim, if this thing doesn’t end up working out with the Chamber, what is your relationship going to be like with God? Especially since you prayed for this position and it was God who led you here?”

That was a tough question.

At the end of the day, I had to reconcile with the fact that prayer is not always about asking for what you want and then expecting to get it.

Ultimately, I concluded that, for better or worse, God gave us free will to make choices. And sometimes bad things happen to good people.

Unfortunately, the combination of toxic staff behavior and a dysfunctional board was eventually going to end my career at the Chamber.

But through all of this, I learned something about prayer.

Prayer is not always about changing the outcome.

Maybe sometimes prayer is about changing the person who has to walk through it.

Even when I was at my lowest during the months of November and December, I never turned away from prayer.

The words I was speaking were certainly different.

It was no longer about asking God to lead me to the mountaintop.

It was more like asking God to lead me through the valley and not let me go.

And I am not going to lie. Much like the poem “Footprints in the Sand,” I knew there were times when there was only one set of footprints because He was carrying me.

So now, it has been nearly nine months since I left the Chamber.

And six months since I started Tying It Together Consulting.

One lesson I have been reminded of is that prayer does not always result in the answer you thought you were asking for.

Sometimes those requests do not get answered the way you hoped because you are being prepared for something else.

Another dear friend and I sat down a few weeks after I left the Chamber, and we were discussing the possibility of me starting a new business.

He asked, “How long again were you at the Chamber?”

“Nine months,” I said, rather begrudgingly.

To that he replied, “Well, you know what else happens in nine months?”

I honestly did not know what he was talking about.

“Come on, Jim,” he said. “You’re a dad. What happens in nine months?”

He was really on to something.

Maybe I needed those nine months to go through what I went through so something new could be born.

Prayers do get answered.

I believe that.

But sometimes they lead us through the valley before we ever understand what is waiting on the other side.

And while I pray to a Christian God, prayer is not unique to one tradition, even if each tradition understands and practices it differently.

Gandhi wrote that “prayer is not asking,” but something deeper within the soul.

Abraham Joshua Heschel described prayer as a way of moving beyond the “narrowness of self-interest.”

Thich Nhat Hanh’s loving-kindness practice invites us to see ourselves and others “with the eyes of understanding and love.”

Across traditions, prayer seems to do something more than request an outcome.

It slows us down.

It turns us inward.

It opens us outward.

And it reminds us that we are not carrying life alone.

A year ago, I thought I was praying for a position.

Maybe God was preparing me for a calling.

And maybe that is the part of prayer I understand a little more now.

Sometimes prayer changes the situation.

Sometimes prayer changes the path.

And sometimes prayer changes the person walking through it.