So, its been a while since I posted a blog. I have written a lot since my last post but haven’t actually posted anything in a while and thought it was about time I did.
Long story short, I decided to leave my job that I have been at for a little over two years, back in July. I was always taught to never leave a job without having another one lined up. But I very seriously felt God telling me it was time for me to leave. I know this may not make sense to some people, and you might believe me when I say I felt God telling me to leave but that I still shouldn’t have left my job without another one lined up. Well, if you know me at all you know that I don’t do anything unless I’m doing it 110%. And I decided to listen to Him.
After leaving my job I went on a week long vacation to Door County Wisconsin and made a very serious effort to get up early each morning and be alone with God. (I wrote a separate blog each morning of that trip, and a final blog to sum it all up. These can be found on my Facebook page.) That week was the happiest I have felt in so long. I was so full of God and the Holy Spirit and just felt overwhelmingly blessed and happy.
When I feel that happy about life and where I am at I start to get scared. I fear that there is no way I can be this happy and things will fall apart in no time. And sometimes they do, which is what I am here to talk about in this blog.
It is now October 3rd, so it has been over two months since I decided to leave my job. I just accepted a position at a company and will be starting tomorrow! But we will talk about that later. Before I get to far into the details of these last few months please know that in no way am I trying to complain about a single thing, these are just my honest feelings and experiences. I have been without a job since July and since then I feel like my life has fallen apart quicker than I could imagine.
Over the summer right around the time I decided to leave my job I went on a mission trip to Africa. After getting home from Africa, I will spare you the awful details, I got sick. I went to the emergency room and later found out that I had E.Coli. Now if you’re not familiar with what this is, it is a bacteria that gets into your system through contaminated food or water. If its not treated or found you can actually die from this.
While I was recovering from E.Coli, I went on that vacation to Door County. Everything was awesome like I said, but on the second to last day of the trip I was hiking and broke my foot. I went to the hospital when I got home and not only found out that this was the third time I had broken my foot in this spot but that I would also need surgery on it. Oh, and my insurance that I had through work stopped the day before my surgery. I am extremely active and work out every single day. I have worked very hard to lose 30 pounds in the last year and this surgery on my foot really set me back. I gained back almost 20 pounds which has crushed my self esteem and being inside and off my foot for that long has made me really sad and depressed.
After a month of job searching and interviewing all over the place I finally landed a job! I was so excited and was promised so many great things from this company just to find out that it was all a scam. A few days after that I was offered another job that I was even more excited about. It was walking distance from where I lived, the manager and I found out we go to the same church, and it was even on Madison Avenue which I took as a good sign. A few days after I had accepted that offer they called me and took my offer back because of something that happened years earlier.
I wasn’t making any money and was terrified that I would lose my apartment, lose my car, and really lose myself in this dark time. I was thousands of dollars in debt with medical bills from my surgery, late car payments, late rent payments, I couldn’t afford to buy myself groceries, I couldn’t pay for anything. My mind started wondering to dark places to try and figure out how to get out of this debt. I sold all of my furniture in my apartment, and started babysitting several times a week with a broken foot. When I ran out of money again, I opened up another credit card which is now maxed out and has just put me into even more debt. If you have ever struggled with money/debt you know how much it can just suck all positivity and happiness from your life and drain you completely. Everything bad in my life seemed to stem from it, it caused hard times in my relationships, in my self esteem, and so many other areas. It is an overwhelmingly lonely and scary place to be in.
Throughout this whole thing I have often wondered where the heck God was and if I actually heard him back in July when I decided to leave my job and things begin to crumble. A lot of people have told me they don’t feel bad for me because it was my decision to leave my job in the first place. Well, I never wanted anyone to feel bad for me, I wasn’t trying to complain about anything, I knew it was my decision and somewhere deep, wayyyyy deep, inside my heart I still knew God would see me through this.
Now I know for a fact that this suffering and pain was exactly what my faith needed.
I lost a lot and realized how many things in my life I replaced God with. God has given me such a huge heart for people and in my last position I was constantly challenged by people in all different ways and it very seriously started affecting the way I loved and cared for people and I hated that. I also became addicted to working out, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially because I was the most fit I had ever been. But it became a bad thing when I started loving myself only because of how awesome I thought my body looked, and how many times people throughout the week would compliment me. I didn’t love myself because I was a child of the King, I made my own body an idol and put it above God and worked harder on my body than I did on my faith and never gave him credit for it. I should have loved people more and been more understanding and patient. I should have worked just as hard on my workouts but thanked him every day for the fact that I have two legs and can run and work out. I should have thanked Him for calling me daughter and for loving me no matter how I looked.
In my book I am reading, “Nothing to Prove”, there is a section that talks about everything I just mentioned. The authors sister is talking about how incredibly happy and perfect everything in her life is and a few months later everything fell apart for her all at once. The author went on to tell you about how bad she felt for her sister and how sorry she was that she was going through so much all at once. Her sisters response is something I will remember forever. She says, “How blessed am I to lose everything all at once? To know that with nothing else on earth, God is enough? For the rest of my life, I will know I only need Him and that He really is that good.” Wow! That just gives me chills. God knows me so well that He knows exactly how I need to experience something to learn what he wants for me to learn. I am the kind of person that almost always learns the hard way, and sometimes I have to literally lose everything before I realize how much I was putting before God. Even if I have absolutely nothing on this earth, I still have more than I could ever deserve in Jesus alone.
I don’t think a single thing that has happened over these past few months has been a mistake. It has been insanely hard, I have felt desperately lonely, and overwhelming insecure. I have woken up several mornings wishing that I hadn’t and wondering why I had. Almost every part of me was screaming “Give up! You can’t do this! You won’t ever get out of this!” Some days I just became numb. Numbness is unlike any other feeling, its miserable in its own way. But every morning I woke up early, I showered, I got dressed, I drove to interview after interview with my left foot because my right was broken, I did what I needed to do and sold things I didn’t want to sell in order to pay my bills and put gas in my car, I worked hard and I didn’t give up. And I admit it, some days I was hard to handle and I was overwhelming to other people and I sincerely apologize for that. But I couldn’t have gone through this without God and the support of everyone around me. My parents will tell you, and have told me, that a few years ago, I would have given up. This would have been it for me, I wouldn’t have been able to handle the dark places these past few months have taken me, I would have quit.
But God…
But God, protected me.
But God, gave me strength.
But God, gave me hope.
But God, has a plan for my suffering.
He has given me so many things to be thankful for, even in times where I feel like I have nothing. The parts of the story I didn’t mention earlier, because I was to blinded by my pain to notice the blessings were…Yes I got E.Coli but I also had the opportunity to serve in my favorite country in the world, yeah I broke my foot but I had the best vacation ever and was so connected to God, yes I did have thousands of dollars in medical bills for my surgery but the hospitals amazing charity funds paid for the entire thing in full for me, no I didn’t get the jobs I thought I wanted but mans rejection is Gods protection, no I don’t have a lot of furniture right now but I have a roof over my head and a place to sleep every single night. I also have a family who loves me more than I could imagine. I have amazing friends and a great boyfriend who constantly lift me up and encourage me. I have so much to be grateful for. And at the ned of the day I was always reminded of His love for me, through other people, through sunsets and the moon that followed, and through scripture. Romans 5 says, “..rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”
Think about all of the people you know. I have found that many of the people I know who have suffered the most are also the people most full of joy.
I often wonder, in these times of suffering what God is trying to teach me, why does he have to teach me this way, couldn’t he go a little easier on me, haven’t I been through enough? Oswald Chamber’s says it well, “Gods aim looks like missing the mark because we are to short sighted to see what He is aiming at.” He is aiming for our freedom and salvation but we rarely understand or see that.
Psalm 23:4 reads, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and staff, they comfort me.”
Be comforted and know that whatever it is that you are suffering from, it will not last forever and you are not alone in it.
The book I mentioned before came out months ago and I actually haven’t read it in a few weeks but decided to read it this morning. And today of all days, after the horrible suffering, and tragic event that took place in Las Vegas over the weekend, it read;
“Lately it seems as if every day brings news of another terrorist attack in the world. The goal of terrorism isn’t that it would destroy the world; it’s that the world would live afraid. And, my friend, our fear is something we can control. Romans 8 says, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?…No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The most precious, life-giving thing about us-our identity in Christ – can never be taken from us.”
My thoughts and prayers go out to all of the people who lost their lives in Las Vegas, to those who lost the ones they loved, to those who are injured, and to those questioning their faith in this heartbreaking time.
