![]() I don’t know who turned my timetable on its side, but whoever it was – Please sit it right side up! Chaotic is the only word that comes to mind to describe my life right now. Dead End is another good description for my life right now as that is all I seem to be encountering at the moment. I had to leave my rental situation of the last two years at the end of March. I have never had any issues finding a room to rent, however, I have not been able to find a place this time around and so I am typing this blog from my friend’s dining room table. I am staying with her and her fiancé for a few weeks which doesn’t sound too bad, but the house is tiny and they are getting married and about to have a dozen people staying here and so as I said timing is just horrible right now. I also lost my roommate and my neighbor who have been a great help to me when it comes to my car of never-ending problems. I helped her pack up some last minute things and drove her up to her new town and while doing so that wonderful Low Coolant Light started flashing. The entire coolant system in my car is brand new including the thermostat and sensor so I really have to ask, What now, Chevy? Maybe your new cars are award winning, but your old cars are far from it. Problem is that I no longer have anyone to help me with my car. It goes down, so do I. And of course, I had to say goodbye to the world’s greatest dog, Lilly. As soon as I would open my door in the morning I would hear the thump, thump of her tail wagging on the floor. At first sight, she would jump up and run to greet me and flop over onto her back for a morning belly rub. She also helped me with my exercise by taking me on very brisk walks through the neighborhood. She is a sweet girl and I will miss her and my roommate very much as they were both very good to me. While I was going through all of this cleaning stuff out and packing stuff up and trying to find a place to live, my work asked me start working overtime. Again, timing is just not working in my favor these days. My work is asking the impossible of me, completely disrespecting me on a daily basis and they pay me quite close to nothing for all of my trouble. I guess I should have never taken this job as it certainly has put me in a tight corner, but I didn’t know the financial issues surrounding this university until after I started work. I have been trying to find a new job, but that too has been one dead end after another. What do you do when all the doors are closed and your typically vocal gut is completely silent? Well, I have been grappling with the idea of going back home to Memphis for a while, but I have been reluctant to quit my job, which would mean loosing my income and my health insurance. I can only have coverage through a group plan or Obama Care since I have that ugly “C” word in my medical records. Memphis is also a place where a lot of bad things happened. While I do have family there, it is just a hard place to go back to due to all of the things that went so wrong there. Unfortunately, my decision might be made for me shortly because if my car is going to start acting up again, I will have no choice but to abandon ship and go home. It already has a starting problem and if I have to start putting coolant in it again and start taking it back up to the shop again I will have no one to help me out. I will have to fork out money for a rental car every time as well as the money to fix whatever is wrong. It would be far better for me to take it up to my brother in Tennessee and have him look at it and if needed have him help me find a tide-me-over car for a couple grand and unload this car of a million problems. Back when all of this upheaval started, I asked God what in the world was going on and what I needed to do about it. Thus far, He has only stated, “ You need to learn to ride the wave.” I am literally flying blind and just taking each day as it comes and trying to understand that any control I thought I had now seems to be gone. Circumstances are taking over and ushering in a new reality. I have known that I was racing against a ticking time bomb with my car, my job and my finances and it appears the bomb is starting to detonate, it appears I have lost the race, it appears that I am watching myself crash in slow motion… But I have to continue to ride this wave to its destination leaning not on my own understanding and trusting that the wave will take me to where I need to be regardless of how uncomfortable I am while in transit. God may call it riding the wave, but I think I am learning how to trust. My trust meter is really low for myself and for others. Erwin had this to say recently, “…many of you are wondering where your opportunities are, but they have been there all along, you just treated them like giants and ran from them in fear…” This is especially true regarding some opportunities that have come across my path. They were awesome opportunities that any sane person would jump at, but I would find a list of reasons why I might not be a good fit. As I said in my previous post, I have burned a lot of lies I have believed about myself – the easy part. Now, I have the hard part – the part where I have to start acting as if the lies really are lies which, means stepping out of fear and into faith and facing these so called giants head on and trusting that I am fully capable.
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It’s been a year since I penned Corralling Part 1 and I never wrote a part two, but then again, this special one is still in her holding pen. I was driving the other day and reflecting on life in Florida and life in Los Angeles and the vast difference between those two lives. I was also reflecting on my financial situation, which as we all know was just re-torn to smithereens. I was thinking, ‘how can I be in this situation again! How is it that I keep winding up here. Why can’t I get anything going for myself!’ And just before I would come to a place of movement, I would think I guess I am just in a burning season. I have thought this many times before, but this time God had something to say about it. Abruptly and with force He interjected the following: You are not in a burning season. You chose this. And you keep choosing it. I knew exactly what He meant. You see, I have a history of talking myself out of amazing opportunities and shrinking back into my little shell. I also have a great talent when it comes to pulling out all the stops for a job that I won’t like and won’t pay me near what I am worth or need. I have been going through a CR Step Study so that in the future, I can lead a CR Step Study and we just had our burning party. In this particular CR, after Step 4 and 5 are complete, we burn our inventories. Since my focus for this step study was to rip out all of the lies I have believed about myself, I wrote all of those lies down on a couple sheets of paper and threw them into the fire and watched them turn into ashes. It was only a few days after this that God told me that my so called burning season is due to my own choices and those choices have been rooted in fear due to the lies I have believed about myself for so long that I don’t even know where I first heard them. Or perhaps I do know where they come from – experiences and events that scarred me and made me think less of myself. This brings me back to that sermon from Erwin McManus that I seem to recount over and over again on this blog and in my life. That sermon where he asked, “whose voice are you listening to?” Whose voice is getting the last word in your life? Is it God’s voice or someone else’s? Well, if you want to know if you are listening to God’s voice then you have to know what God says about you. While I am not the best at knowing scripture, I do know that according to scripture God delights in me. He knit me together and considers me a masterpiece. He loves me more than I will ever understand and while He is not always proud of my actions, He is always proud of the lady I am becoming while I venture through life with Him. I also know that the Bible says we can do anything He has called us to do. Maybe that is my hiccup. Maybe I don’t know what I have been called to do. I do know that we all have a calling to love God and to love others, but I believe we each have personal callings that match a passion burning within us. And I am a lady of a million passions so maybe as Kim McManus said the other day, I am overwhelmed by choice so I keep not choosing. I fear I don’t know how to choose correctly, or I fear I am biting off more than I can chew or maybe my fear in choosing allows the voices that aren’t God’s to flood me with lies and so I choose wrong again. My life is about to get turned upside down all over again. My roommate situation is ending at the end of March and I am desperately trying to get out of my latest job choice mistake by the end of May. I am unsure if I will be renting another room in Florida for a few more months or if I will go back to Memphis, but I do know one thing – If a good opportunity that excites me ever crosses my path again, especially in the next few weeks, I am going for it. 100%. Let the Lion Roar. I am done with talking myself out of amazing opportunities. I am done believing the lies. I know the difference between my gut telling me something’s not right and plain old fear so from now on, - I am going with my gut. It’s what brought me to Los Angeles and it is what brought me to Florida and one of these days my gut will lead me out of this holding pen. After all, my life verse is Joel 2:25 and I do believe that God will restore the years the lies ate away. Outside your comfort zone is where the magic happens. |
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