I’m one of those disorganized Bible readers. I jump around to different books on a whim and at times pick up one of my daily devotionals for a quick read instead. I have a hard time remembering to read those every day though, but I did peek at one of my favorites tonight: “Grace for the Moment,” by Max Lucado. The above verse was this morning’s devotional and I wish I had read it before I went about my day.

On the outside, life is good. The kids are healthy, the animals are taken care of, we aren’t starving or at risk of being evicted. I have friends who care for me, family who is there for me, a job that allows me to serve people.

Why do I feel like I’m under constant attack, then?

We’ve all had those times in our lives when it seems like one thing after another is going wrong. Like an ocean wave, life pushes you under and just as you get your head above water and catch a breath, it pushes you down again. You swim and struggle and swim some more against the current, but you’re lucky to get ahead. More likely than not, you are pushed out further from shore with each wave.

I am usually pretty good at going with the flow, adapting to small changes in my environment.

I have been doing this with my job over the last couple months. However, as much as I have tried to adapt and gain perspective and keep an open mind, I have this extremely nagging feeling that I’m fighting against the current. Morale has taken a huge hit and without going into all the details here, I think the changes at the office have been too many, too drastic, too soon. The micro-management has me fearful to do my job properly and the decision to change our schedules, job duties, and how we perform those duties all have me ready to say goodbye.

BUT… I love my job. I love helping parents help their children. What I don’t love is being leashed like a child or talked to like one either.

It makes me heartsick to think of leaving my job, but the fact is I can financially survive without it. I can take better care of my kids without it. I can spend more time at home without it. I can set my own schedule and be sick or take vacation when I need to. I would save 8 hours of travel time a week and more than a hundred dollars in gas a month.

But what about the parents? The children? The satisfaction I get from helping them and helping myself in the process?

I’m sure there must be a way I can continue to serve the special education population, but I don’t know how. I don’t know if it’s what I’m meant to continue doing, though this was my goal when I went back to school. Maybe it was just for a season, though.

I need the Lord’s help. I need wisdom. I need direction.

Will I be ignoring my calling to serve this population if I leave this job, or will my true calling be opened instead? I feel like I was sent to do this, but maybe our calling shifts and changes as we grow and our life circumstances change. I don’t know. I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I know what I want to do (give my notice and go back to freelancing full-time), but is it the right thing to do?

Only the Lord knows, and he will help me.

Not really. God will pull us through, and I have total faith in his abilities to let us suffer only to the extent that it brings glory to his name. Someday I’ll be the story that the unbelievers look at in awe and wonder… how did she do it? How did she get through all of that in one piece? I’ll be able to say it was because of my Lord… because of my ability to let go of my life and let him guide me where he wants me.

Where is that now though?

I have no idea. I am so lost. Believers shouldn’t feel helpless and hopeless or lost, but we do from time to time. It’s easy to feel abandoned and tossed aside to be forgotten. It’s easy to think we’re being punished or that we don’t deserve the good in life that we know he can and does provide for others. But I know better. I know that when I was blessed… materially, with a home, nice car, more money than we could spend each month… I was more lost than I am now. At least now I know I am loved and accepted just as I am, poor and all, and I am thankful everyday for his love and the gifts he gives me in my children and friends and family.

However, these recent changes in events have me thinking… where does God want me? I honestly don’t know, but I’m going to be praying about it hard. I have friends and family who would love to see me move to Southern California for a fresh start. Others suggest Reno, where my ex-husband and I were building our home when we separated. My brother in Alabama wants me to join him out there with him and his family.

I know I have so many wonderfully awesome people in my life who want to help and suggest the path the girls and I will heal most quickly on, but I want to go where my future is. But I don’t know what my future holds. It could be love, it could be more children, it could be staying at home with a family or finding another job. It could be remaining single and serving only him and my children for the rest of my life. I have no idea, though I am aware of the gifts he has given me to share with the world. I only need to find how best to share them, and then I believe I will find my way.

I have to admit a change of pace and location would be ideal right about now. With all the heartache over the last year and a half and all the recent turbulence with my in-laws and the California system, I’m ready to run away. The school district is declining faster than could have been anticipated and I dread sending my kids to a school where they don’t have access to a library. Call me old-fashioned, but I believe books will never die and should not be eliminated because of classroom access to the internet.

Now that I have nothing holding me here in Paradise, I am considering relocation. My parents are here and I grew up here… but there’s nothing else. After six months I still don’t feel at home in my new church and after a year of looking for love, I have come to realize it’s not likely to find me here. After a year and a half of looking for a great employer with pay that will sustain me, I see that is just as hard to find.

Where is my future? Who is it with? Where is my happy ending?

Please Lord, send me some answers…

Truth is, sometimes I think I’ve written to you. I’ll write blog posts in my head and forget to ever get to the laptop to record them. But my mind thinks because I’ve thought it, I’ve already communicated it with you. Weird, I know. Anyway, that’s how a month goes by before I realize I haven’t updated anyone on my life.

The last 30 days have been an equal mix of good and bad.

The good: I got a great job. Spent a day role-playing as a pioneer teacher at the Gold Nugget Museum. Enjoyed many qualities afternoons with my girls. Hired a lawyer to take care of my legal problems.

The bad: My new job takes away a lot of time from my girls. I unexpectedly lost my health insurance, which necessitated borrowing $3,500 to hire a lawyer. I missed the opportunity for the girls and I to get baptized on Mother’s Day.

Overall, things are going pretty well I guess. After all, I am working and earning money and now I have a legal professional on my side during this difficult time. It takes a lot of weight off my shoulders. On the other hand, I’ve been feeling very disconnected from life and fellowship. A lot of it, I think, has to do with my lack of involvement at my new church.

It’s been about five months since we started going to Paradise Alliance Church. It has been difficult going from knowing most of the staff and a lot of the body of Calvary Chapel to knowing almost nobody at this new church. It did take me about 6 months at Calvary before I began to feel a part of the body, so I’m trying to remember that and take it slow… but at the same time, I walk the hallways and miss being able to say hi to friends and church family. I feel like a stranger in my own church right now; it’s not a good feeling.

However, when I met a few of the elders during a Getting Started session at Paradise Alliance, I found I wasn’t alone in this experience. I learned that this time may be a time to focus on myself and my relationship with Christ, instead of right away putting all my energy into serving.

Sometimes I think servants need this kind of recharging in order to keep being the best they can as a servant. I was giving a lot to Calvary Chapel, and part of the reason I left was because of how unbalanced my giving felt as compared to the receiving of the spirit I was feeling. So basically, I’m trying to soak in what I can during this season. Each time I catch myself wishing I could serve, I think it prolongs the time I will need to spend alone.

For now, I’m doing my best to focus on my spiritual recharging. This past week has been hard, and part of that has to do with difficulties with the divorce process I am going through. (After all, I was supposed to have closure in this area a good 8 months ago.) The frustration I felt for my ex translated to general dismay with the entire male species, but I realize I am wrong to do that. I don’t hate men and I never have, but I no longer wear rose-colored glasses thinking they’re all knights in shining armor.

Now that I’m comfortable in my own skin, being single and raising my kids… I find myself thinking that men are an unnecessary distraction. Every time I tell myself I don’t need a man in my life, every time I shut men out of my life, and every time I give up on getting married again… God shows me I’m wrong. His work within my heart is amazing, but it’s such a vulnerable and at times painful feeling. I think he wants me to be open to love from another human being, but guarded enough to not go looking for it. This tells me that I must wait and keep my heart soft, because He will send someone into my life when I least expect it. I will not find him, he will find me. I’m not sure how or where or when, but the expectant hope is exciting.

So in the last 30 days, I’ve learned that the Lord will always continue to carry me, even as I become more self-sufficient. He will continue to provide, even when I don’t think I need it anymore. God is good. I’m excited to see what my future holds, so every time I think I have the answers… just ignore me. I don’t know what’s good for me, but He does.

It was about this time that I began hatching a plan to get out of school. I tricked my parents into signing the consent form for me to take the California High School Proficiency Exam — which back then was available to students 15 and older. Students who pass are legally allowed to leave high school with the equivalent of a diploma once they turn 16 or finish their sophomore year. Of course, I passed, and after my 1st semester of my junior year, I left high school… much to the surprise and disappointment of my parents.

I did go on to college though… but it was too soon. I wish I had known then that kids are not necessarily ready for college straight out of high school. I certainly wasn’t ready at 16 years old. I thought I knew what I wanted to do, but I was still so young that I hadn’t been able to experience life and all the wonderful things in it. After a couple semesters of struggling, I quit school and began working. I was 19 when I went back to college… this time knowing what I wanted to do but not having the discipline to see it through. After three wonderful semesters at a private art school in San Francisco, I gave it up because of an interfering engagement that ended up going nowhere.

My plans have never quite worked the way I had envisioned them, which is why to this day, I hate planning for the future. Sure… it’s nice to daydream and wow, the things I imagine. But time and time again, I’m disappointed and let down. Oh, the list of things I have visualized, began and failed to accomplish. The harshest reality came when I lost my dream home… the one dream bigger than all the others — to not just become a homeowner, but to pick a lot and design your own home from the ground up. After I lost that home six weeks before escrow was to close, along with my marriage (which was much less of a loss than the home, I’m afraid)… I discovered something.

First, and most importantly, I rediscovered God after a 15-year absence. On my knees I came home to welcoming arms and a loving embrace. In the year that followed, I then discovered that my plans never worked out for me because they were not God’s plans for my life. Some things I lost in the past may be a part of His plan for my future, such as owning a home, but it will all happen in His time.

I have a hard time remembering this, so I’m always bummed when things don’t go my way. In the last six months, I saw plans for a single mom’s ministry and two of my top career choices go down the drain after an injury to my wrist. Even with freelance writing, my hand hurts after a day of typing. I’ve come to the point where I’ve realized writing will not sustain me forever. I also find it’s time to admit to myself that there’s so much more I could be doing for myself and my kids.

So, I’m doing it. I’m going back to school in the Fall, as I have planned for more than a year now. Waiting had a lot to do with the divorce and financial aid, but I’m ready and excited. I’m trying not to form expectations, though. I’m also trying to remind myself that I can’t make firm plans about what will happen after I complete the program I’m going to attempt. I’m going to remain flexible and prayerful, believing that God will lay my path out for me. I believe He has already shown me the way and I’m walking towards it, but I also know first hand how straight a path looks until you get to that very end and see a 90 degree turn.

One step at a time. I’m enrolled and next month I’ll be registered. We’ll take it from there, the Lord and myself. For now, I know what I want and what I am physically capable of at this point — to get back to my original love. Before writing, before law, before being a mommy was a twinkle in my eye. A love I discovered in an A-frame cabin on Bass Lake in Minnesota during a cross-country vacation with my grandparents when I was 14… the same trip I discovered the truth about my father’s suicide. And only now looking back can I see just how life-altering that trip was almost 20 years ago.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.” Proverbs 3:5-6