It has been a little over a month since we decided it was time to buckle down and get to support raising. Or rather maybe, since God decided to buckle us down. It seems as though we, or me, had a lot of barriers stopping us, or me, from being effective in the life God was trying to construct for us. I'm not completely sure about Eli's barriers and I don't want to speak for him, but I think they might have had a lot to do with anxiety and self-confidence (self-conciousness), so we'll just think about mine instead.
It is really easy to do things with your life that YOU want for yourself and when they end up feeling good, or turning out well in your eyes, to say that it "must have been God's plan" for you. About a year ago this month was when I finally decided it was time to quit my terrible job and stop letting it completely overwhelm my life. And it wasn't without a heavy heart that I did so. At the time I told myself it would be what was best for me, that quitting an average paying job in retail photography was NOT taking a step backwards in my "career." But, I am seeing now that I really DID feel that way...That is not what you DO in America. You don't graduate from college to drive a school bus. Even now that its all said and done and I'm back behind the wheel (making more money working less hours than I was in my "career path") I still feel myself feeling a little ashamed to bring it up in casual conversation. (Even though it is a really important, legitimate job that lots of respectable people do AND I actually enjoy it.) There's something in this part of the world (America) that tells us blue collar jobs are not "real jobs." and shock to myself, I subscribe to that notion. Yech. Who knew? (God.)
Anyway, when I made the final decision to step down from my position, it didn't feel good, but it did feel relieving, and I told myself "Self, it must be God's plan for you." I don't think I really believed that though. I kind of always thought I was just doing what I wanted 'cause I hated the hell that is Retail Management. (And it is. Add screaming kids and angry parents to retail management and you have Hell. You also have Children's Photography.) Well, now it is a full year later and I am just getting to the meat of the lesson that God was beginning to teach me (and also just getting to the point of this post...). It seems that my judgement of others who were enlisting in Corporate America was simply the speck in my eye that was keeping me from seeing my own faults. I believed equally as strongly that where you work and what you make is directly in proportion to who you get to be. And I say "get" because I also felt it was a total crap shoot (or rather I felt that other people had been able to make better ground in their lives because they were quite coddled through high school and college (ie: they got to do what they wanted cause their Mommies and Daddies paid for it. and mine didn't. which is a lie. because mine did, too.) but we'll just stick with "crap shoot" for lack of a better term, ey?). So I felt like a failure. A Failure, when I chose. CHOSE to quit my job. Chose being the operative word. Duh.
But, now its a year later and I feel like I really can say "yep, self, that was God's plan for you." about quitting my job. Because without quitting my job I never would have even known I had a lesson to learn in the first place. And that lesson being? Um...That money isn't everything? I thought I knew that already! Oh wait, maybe that's the lesson then. That I don't know everything. (That I can't even write a coherent blog post without His help? Probably.) Didn't I know that already, too?
So that was barrier #1 for me....a huge one, that in breaking down lead to at least a dozen other walls that I'm in the midst of climbing over. And don't get me wrong, its not like once God points out that speck in your eye it just goes away, or that it ever really goes away (at least for me, for you it may be different, it probably is and that is why most people function better in society than I do. (see? I can't escape it. Lack of status does not equal Lack of credibility, tell me again and again Lord, please.)). Right now it's like one minute I will be thinking about what a great revelation this is about money and success and life that God has given me, but then two seconds later I'm back to thinking "Yes....but...you don't go to college to be a bus driver." (You don't go to college to be a film maker either...dot dot dot...) and "Oh...and...those people are so much more together than me." It's clearly an uphill battle with this one. But I will NOT be defined by the job I do or the money I make! But I will be defined by the Life God has picked out for me! (I feel like Tammy Faye or something when I say positive, affirming things like that, as if that is a bad thing. Also, is she dead? I would say I feel like Joel Osteen but I think he probably does define himself by his success, and also I would probably offend somebody if I made fun of him. And anyway, I thought my lesson had something to do with judge not lest ye....)
Lesson #2, I can post about God without sounding overly sentimental or bitterly snarky.
Lesson #3, I can end a post when its done, not on a clever closing statement. (harhar)
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