I’m not quite sure where my head is these days. I have found peace in dealing with impending unemployment. Why I don’t know, maybe it’s a survival instinct. I’m actually looking forward to some time off next week. I don’t have any more confidence I will land a great job. But, I’ve accepted that. Not that I’m not looking of course, I certainly am and applying when I find something, it is just that, well, maybe this is part of the overall plan.
I don’t subscribe to the belief that everything that happens is part of God’s master plan. Sometimes, things just happen. Bad stuff happens, good stuff happens. The difficulty lies in discerning how it does fit into the overall plan, but things happening because they were meant to? I can’t quite buy that. I do think a discerning spirit and an open heart will realize the blessings when they appear. I, for some reason, feel I have developed that. Not being one to toot my own horn, I don’t like proclaiming something like that, but I do feel I am able to see God at work, either directly or indirectly in my life.
So the point being, I’m free. Going back to last April, I am free from a relationship. Although at the time and for much of the summer and on into the fall I suppose having a relationship would have felt better than being ‘free’. Sometimes being free doesn’t always feel that good. Anyway, now I am free from a job. Now, I fully realize in this particular moment that I am writing this I am totally trying to extract some form of silver lining out of this. So be it. But maybe, just maybe this is another opportunity handed to me.
You see, going back to my relationship, my partner was never on board with my discernment, at least not on board 100%. Me going through this wasn’t the cause of the end of the relationship, but it was a factor. Among all the other held in resentments, hurts, hard feelings (all of that on both sides), this was a factor. And for that I still feel very sorry about. I never made this a make or break thing with him, I would never have sacrificed a loving relationship to continue on with my discernment, I don’t think God would have wanted me to. But as it worked itself out, it ended for other reasons. And because of that, and once I got past the hurt and every other negative emotion, there was definitely a sense of being let loose. And even now I hate thinking of it in those terms because I don’t want to diminish the relationship we had.
And so now in my current state, getting past the whirlwind I am and will continue to be in is a struggle and I imagine it won’t abate any time soon. But, I am able to extract that silver lining and try to see God at work. Now suppose I up and land a great job in an office next week. I still think the lesson I am learning is, don’t imagine you own or are owned by, the ‘things’ in your life. The relationships, the job, car, gadgets, your other stuff, whatever. Because it can all go away tomorrow and what remains is God. I need to be ready for that reality and perhaps that is what I am learning now. It is one thing to know it, and think you know it through and through. It is another thing to live it.
The other part of this is the sense of being set free. Not having a job to go to is scary for me, I’ve had stable employment for years now, never once truly fearing for not having it. Being fortunate enough to be successful and moving up. But having that taken away, well I am being forced to look at new opportunities, a new life perhaps, I’m not sure exactly how to phrase it. But, at least for now I can tell my corporate masters to kiss my #$s J
Beyond that my mind continues to wander. I am much more of a night person and love to sleep in as much as possible in the morning. But recently I have been getting up earlier and earlier, wide awake at 4 or 5 or 6. I know it’s due to anxiety. But I don’t necessarily wake up feeling anxious. I’m just awake.
So I get up and enjoy the quietness, the darkness outside. And I am able to connect with my prayer life in a way that doesn’t seem able to come like that at any other time of the day. At my ex-partner’s house I actually had a habit for a long time of getting up at that time of the morning to read morning prayer. And it never failed, as I would be sitting in the backroom by these large windows overlooking the backyard, and everything was pitch black, I would sit there and hear the lonesome call of a train blowing its whistle off in the dark somewhere.
Those are the moments I long for when it comes to praying. It feels as if nothing else exists in the world except you and God. And maybe the dogs stirring and whining to go out. But beyond that, nothing, not the stress of the upcoming day, the job, whatever else, it just doesn’t seem to exist in those moments.
I’m not quite sure where I was going with that, maybe just that I’ve been able to reconnect in that way. Perhaps that is another gift from God that I can see, in the midst of everything else, maybe God is pulling me up out of my slumber at 5 am so I can be with Him (or Her) and spend a few moments together truly free of distractions.
Maybe it’s God willing me to awake. Or maybe I’m just filled with anxiety, who knows?
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