It's been awhile since I last wrote...I've been busy. Really! I took a job. Yup, the thing I dreaded to have to do. I finally caught a break. I had been handing out resumes for a few weeks, filling in online applications too. There was never a bite. We had no money and no way to make any with no one hiring. I couldn't even get an interview. I was getting more and more disheartened. With painful knees I also dreaded the idea of working. How was I going to be able to stand all day in retail when I could hardly walk up or down the 6 stairs to my front door? Or down the street to pick up Shalom from the bus! Or through the mall without having to sit part way through to hand out the resumes!! It was torture not having finances come in, and it was torture applying to jobs I knew would be physically painful to do just to get minimum wage. I was feeling trapped and pretty hopeless.
Then a break came! I handed a resume over to someone in the mall. We had a nice chat, but her store had already hired two girls last week. She even directed me to the Mall office where a book of jobs in the mall was listed. I thanked her and off I went. Next day the phone call came. A store I hadn't applied to but was the sister store of wanted to see me ASAP. I high tailed it there that afternoon, interviewed and within 10 minutes was asked if I wanted the job. I started the next day at noon. Wow! Did that just happen?!?
I was right about pain! Standing for six hours was incredibly painful! Especially the first day! As the days progress the pain increased, but in my feet not my knees. In fact the ligaments on either side of both my knees seemed to be strengthening. The pain in my feet from standing was slightly lessened by good shoes. It's been two weeks now and my feet did adjusted to standing but I found I have one arch that is either falling or just needs more support. It hurts to even touch it. I'm noticing the pain in my knees more now though because the pain in my feet is no longer over-riding the rest of my senses. SO! I'm working and have yet to be paid. First pay cheque comes on the 15th. An actual, physical cheque too. So old fashioned! I already know it will be disappointing. So much less then Larry used to make per pay cheque. I am thankful I have a job that is low stress though. The job is easy. It's like babysitting a cash register and taking money from people who are so easily parted with it, especially in this store! Country decor items. I can't work past 9pm...10 soon when christmas hours start. But that is so much better than my last job that had me working the 4pm to 1am shift. Ugh! I hated that!!! The hours are not horrid, and the work fairly easy, the pay not great but the ladies I work with are! It's a very laid back environment. We all get along well and there is no work place "drama" really. Now, if only Larry can find a job that pays better then minimum wage, is full time and local! Then we will be able to stay here in Fredericton. That's the goal. To stay here andnot to move away.
It's been a week since I last posted. Feels like forever. What have I been doing that prevented me from writing? Sleeping, mostly. Pathetic, entirely.
This is not how I used to be. I didn't use to hide, or disappear from life and it's difficulties. I used to be the one who stood tall, moved forward with purpose and a plan or at the very least stood leaning into the storms of life that came. But not now. I don't have the strength anymore.
I'm not sure if the reason I don't have the strength is because I lost my purpose or just realized I never had one but was too busy to look for it in the first place.
You'd have to know my life history to understand. I will take the time to write it all out here eventually. It's pretty long. So for space and topics sake, suffice to say life has been difficult since I've been married. Nothing wrong with the marriage, just the continual struggles in finances and health, which affects everything in life. And I was the only healthy one available to manage it all consistently. Oh, there have been good times too. Lots of times when blessings came from known sources, peace was present, or I felt strong enough to handle the crisis at the time knowing there was a lesson to learn and I was intent on learning it well. But one can become overwhelmed by the waves even if they can swim if they come to fast, or too hard, or too big (or all of the above).
This is just the lead up. I had to provide a backdrop to the current query I find bouncing around in my head. The topic has been recurring around me for over a week. It's time to address it, find out what to do about it; if there is anything I can in fact do about Passion and my lack of it.
I know to be true that strength comes from passion. Purpose is what feeds passion. As a little video I saw called TRADER says, passion makes your heart beat faster or your fists clench. I had to ask myself the hard question, 'what does that for me'? My answer at first was absolutely nothing, now. My desire and passion to go back to India has fully slipped away. I have had no long term plans, goals, or desires for such a long time. Everything I did have vanished little by little with each roll of the wave over my head. There's been a lot.
I feel no great surge of energy or excitement towards anything good. I do still have fist clenching moments. They could be turned to good if I knew I could have an effect. If I thought that my concerns or ideas would be considered, let alone listened to! That fist clenching comes from many years of dealing with the health care system, in two countries; two States and three Provinces. Maybe one day I'll delve into that topic, but it just makes me angry so I should not knowingly get into it if I have planned appointments with doctors forthcoming.
The lack of passion is probably partly why all I want to do is sleep. Nothing to grasp onto to keep me motivated. Nothing to wake up for, but more disappointment.
This is sounding completely depressing! I certainly didn't expect it too, or want it too. My purpose was to attack the idea of passion and my lack of it. But maybe I am this way because all that I wrote above is true.
In stead of feeling like I'm just making excuses for not feeling "up to" things, perhaps I really do have a valid reason! Maybe I'm not "wrong" in feeling this way. It's not that I'm just completely lacking in faith, which I have been accused of as well as self accused. Perhaps, I really have been pulled down by the undertow and haven't found my way up yet.
That stupid statement, 'God only gives you what you can handle', I have come to hate (there's a fist clench). People have said that to me I'm sure with the intent to spur me on to keep trying and to over come that current situation. All the while also saying, 'I don't know how you do it'. What a contradiction! The statements just as offending to me now include, 'He's allowing you to go through this to teach you something' , 'Now you will have the ability to reach people who have suffered the same things as you, it will probably end up being your ministry', and how about, 'it's your winter season, your dry season'. 'This is your desert place before you come to your promised land'.
These things are said by people partly because they don't know what else to say, but also because they think they are encouraging you that there is a light at the end of this tunnel. A time of blessing beyond what you have experienced....a time of prosperity, ease and delight. All of which only cater to our natural desire to feel pleasure and not pain. That hedonist desire in all of us to be satisfied with any and every pleasure. Well....that could be going a bit too far, maybe. I do admit I was always wishing I was in a good place of being pleased then in the place I was which was painful in someway shape or form.
I think my strength usually came from the idea that this crisis would end, this test would be complete. I would pass because of how strong I was, how self sacrificing I had been. How loyal, how faithful, how unwavering, positive and encouraging to others throughout the family crisis. I would soon be rewarded with prosperity, friends, the love and admiration of everyone I knew, stability and supernatural health for everyone in my home, plus miraculous healings. Included in that was the false thought that I would be made perfect and no longer need to go through another test to prove myself worthy.
It was the hope of pleasurable times that gave me strength to endure all that I did. Turns out the hope of good times is not a strong enough foundation to stand on. It holds you up for a while but soon crumbles under the pressure when the good never seems to last long, or come at all.
I guess this is the stripping bare that needs to happen. Finding out what I've really been made of, and then re-constructing me. Remodelling is not an easy or clean process...just ask someone who has torn apart a kitchen, or bathroom. It's dusty, smelly, dirty, inconvenient and one of the top most stressful things in life next to moving, divorce, and a severe illness or death in the family. So, when that remodelling is of your inner self, don't expect much less...I certainly don't.
