About Me

Hi, my name is Angela and welcome to my blog. This is a place where I write about my life in an honest and open way.

I am 36 years old, single, and a Christian. God gave me a heart to work with children and so I spend my day teaching kindergarten. It is my fourth year teaching and although it is hard I love it. I currently go to a college for my BA in Elementary Education which keeps me busy. Between work and school there is not much time left but I enjoy serving and helping others, watching netflix, or reading a good book.


Tuesday, April 7, 2009

My parents were always poor they always struggled. As I grew up I had little to nothing and that which we had my parents always sacrificed for us to have. I watched my mother and father struggle every day just fighting to pay the bills and struggling to get food in the fridge just fighting to get through each day. My parents were miserable and I saw it. My mother until the day she died and my father even now struggled to get through everything in life. So I decided I wanted more. I didn't want to live like this. I would have enough to give my kids and I would have a job that was reliable and would have a job where I didn't have to get to the end of the month and wonder how I would pay the rest of the bills. I always dreamed big I wanted to be a teacher, I wanted to be film editor, I wanted to be an ultrasound tech. I even wanted less reliable but more enjoyable things like a foreign missionary or a photographer. But every time I try, every time I get my stuff together and go toward that dream I get pushed down, pushed hard. It may be a couple of years or few months but it happens every time. And try so hard to push back, to hold on, to not loose my ground. But my depression is debilitating. I can't get out of bed let alone get my homework done. And the little that I can do I always choose work over school every time. Not that I can even get to work most days. I can't eat and I can't sleep and then when I do finally fall asleep I can't wake up because I had been awake so long. And when it is bad, really bad, there is no hope. I can see everything falling apart that I worked so hard for falling apart around me and I can't get out of bed or off the couch. And it doesn't matter if I am on meds or not it comes anyways. It comes and pushes me down and smashes my face in the mud just to show me that it can.

And so I give up, I have said it before I know I have. But how can I keep doing this. In a couple months my company is going to come to me and ask me for the $3400 I took for school. For classes that I have now dropped out of. They will ask me for a payment plan. The problem with that is I live pay check to pay check. I have no money to pay them. I make good money, I do but I pay for the price for it and I hate it. I make just enough to pay back the debt that I have and pay for this stupid house that I resent now. I was doing the 'right thing' I was investing. I even got a good deal on the house. And now they keep increasing the HOA fees and I can't afford it and I can't sell it, wouldn't break even with what I currently owe. So I spent 5 years working my ass off to get the payments made and now I am supposed to do what? Give it away and ruin my credit in the process.

I don't understand. What am I supposed to do? All I can see is being one of those people you see at the retail store, a cashier for the next 40 years. I have always looked at the 40 and 50 year old women and that is all they have done. At what point do you realize that you were not meant for anything more than an $8 an hour job. How do you realize you will be working with high schoolers for the rest of your life because that was all you were destined for. Really what I don't understand is how God decides that. How does He say 'This girl will dream big and will desire much and yes some for herself but her mother will teacher her to be selfless and her dreams will be for others and she will be generous with her money and time but instead she will not full fill her dreams instead she will suffer and be nothing important. She will watch others pass her by while she accomplishes nothing. She will try to free herself from this time and time again but will never succeed.'

Turns out I am not talking to God right now. Honestly it feels like He stopped talking to me more than a year ago. I keep trying get Him to talk to me. I would do everything He wanted of me I studying my bible every day and always praying and giving of my time and money and keeping my thought pure and I would sit and try to listen and yet nothing. I even want to SWC to try an please Him thinking this must be what He wants and yet nothing. I feel like everyday for a very long time I have run to his lap to sit an listen to Him and I sit there for hours and I can see He is speaking to others but I can not hear Him. And I don't understand and I beg and plead and yet He does not speak to me, He does not fill my cup. I am tired of going to Him to be ignored. I have tried everything I know and I don't understand. I just want to please Him, I just want to do His will. I don't understand what I have done so wrong.

2 comments:

  1. Oh Angela! I just wish I could take all this pain and agony and wondering away from you. I wish I could make you feel the good, the love the warmth that surrounds you instead of the cold, gray pain, or worse yet, numbness.

    This time is painful, there is no doubt about that. You have been so strong, for much longer than you ever thought you could. And I mean your whole life you have been strong. It's not easy to see your parents (and/or siblings, family and friends) struggle through life. We tend to put undue pressure on ourselves to succeed, often without realizing it. We make up our minds to be something (whatever we deem to be the OPPOSITE of our example). And sometimes we even convince ourselves that we are doing it for someone else's good.

    In the process, we make big plans for ourselves, don't we? I was going to be famous. When that didn't happen, I was going to be stable. And for some of us, it all gets stripped away. It may be choices we make. Or it may just be circumstances we encounter, or it could even be a combination of both. But whatever the catalyst, the world around us drastically changes, melts away, and we feel vulnerable and naked and like flesh ripped away, we feel intense pain. And let's not forget the betrayal. We feel like we've been led to believe this lie about dreams and prosperity and victory. In the middle of it all, there seems to be no hope. It's like you're in a dark cave, and there is no hint of light.

    But somewhere along the way, the slightest pinhole of light WILL appear. And you learn that the voice of desperation, the one that tells you every day is hopeless, the one that says you've been lied to... that VOICE is the LIAR. And you learn the purpose behind the pain. I don't pretend to know what purpose there is, because I believe it's different for all of us. I know when I went through it, I learned that I had unknowingly put my security into my profession, my relationships, my credit rating, my stability, my reputation, my ministry- all of it. But not my relationship with the Living God. And one by one, they were all stripped away from me, including my dignity. But although I cannot name to you the purpose (and how badly I WISH I could!), I know there IS a purpose, and a promise, even if the only promise is, "I will never leave you, nor forsake you."

    I want you to know you WILL make it through this trial. You do have people who LOVE you and PRAY for you and SUPPORT you. You have us, and we want to be there for you, whatever you need. If you need to scream, if you need to weep, if you need to rest, if you just need to BE.

    I love you, Angela. I hope you know you are loved by so many. You matter, and you will make it through this. There is light and there is hope, even though you can't see it right now. God has a perspective much greater than ours,and He can see the end when we cannot. He has not turned his back on you. He will never do that. Don't listen to the lie.

    Love you,
    My

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