Almost done.

I find it ironic that as Tall and I are almost finished with this phase of things, we are having to sit back and watch our nation enter the first stages of default! Denial...goes down really sweet and keeps things foggy for a good long while until the truth slaps you so hard you can't see your own feet.

Tall and I are at the tail of our stay in the "60-Day Club", a waiting place of sorts just prior to discharge of debts (Deo Volente!) and the conclusion of our bankruptcy case (double Deo Volente!). We're still in the desert though.


I had intended to blog daily about my ordeal, but I have found that the feelings are simply too intense to live with that closely...so I find these posts are extremely spaced out as I somehow deal with the crashing and often crushing emotions of total financial collapse. Tall is not doing as well as I'd hoped. He has been hired locally, but he is underemployed. He is working in the healthcare field, but it is slippery ground to start on and he is feeling zero support. The worst thing about all of this has been watching what he is going through. I'm not so sure we will survive this...it is so painful to endure. I find myself in a continual state of prayer and while that does help me, I can't help Tall.

I can't help him at all.

I'm barely keeping my own self together for him and for our girls, and that is only by the graciousness of God (which I can assure you is a very real thing). He has things to work out on his own and he (hopefully) is, but every now and then he just falls apart on me and when that happens...the weight of him is too much for me to carry but I can't leave him wounded on the field to bleed out and die either.

You see, I GET that this has been a business decision...and a GOOD business decision for us as a couple and as a family. I know he "knows" this too, but there is something ingrained in him (in all men, I'm sure) that is telling him because of all of this, he has failed. That HE, PERSONALLY, has failed. That even though he was laid off from one career, went back to school to learn a brand new career and graduated at the top of his class, that he somehow didn't do enough. Somehow, he should have known, should have had some mystical, magical ability to see into the future to know that if he put his foot to the left instead of the right, it wouldn't all have come down like a house of cards on us. And how unfair is it that there were no jobs for the 2009 grads, and there are for the 2010, 2011, 2012 grads?!?!?  (WHAT THE F*&% IS THAT ABOUT EXACTLY ANYWAY?!?)  Doesn't matter that MILLIONS of Americans ARE IN THE SAME POSITION as we are, doesn't matter that things have actually gotten a bit better for use since last year's near suicidal posts from my own sorry self, nothing I say to him even makes a dent, so I've quit talking about it. I tell him "I love you" and "I'm here for you" and "this situation is not forever" and I have to believe especially that last one and I trust God that it this won't be forever...but it has been so long already, and I'm so tired.

So, I pray. I pray for him, I pray for strength for me. I pray we somehow can be good parents in spite of all of this going on, and then I look at how much I'm praying for ME MINE OURS MEMEMEMEME! and I get a little disgusted with myself. So, I started praying for everyone else, too, lol. I found a post online that really sums up things for me: "Faith and the Blessing of Turmoil".  I'll just repost it here, shall I?

It’s easy to praise God when the sun is shining and everything is bright and beautiful. It’s a much more difficult thing to do when a dark storm blows in and it’s raining so hard you can’t see two feet in front of you. What do you do when it seems as though God is standing back while everything around is falling to pieces? How do you praise a God that doesn’t seem to care anymore? When it seems you’ve been abandoned, how do you keep going on?

Well, I’ll tell you something…I don’t know, I’m still figuring it out myself.  ;)

What I understand so far, though, is that there are lessons to learn in the midst of the storm, lessons you cannot learn when the sun is shining.  The one I seem to be learning is “where does your trust lay?”  For example, I could say “I know trust, I trust you Lord! See, I’ll close my eyes and follow where you lead!” But the second I misstep, my eyes will pop open and there’s the path clear as day in front of me.  Trust isn’t necessary if I can already do it on my own.

In a storm though, one can’t rely on one’s eyes because the wind is whipping and the rain stings the face…plus it’s dark.  But, one has to rely on something else as they go.  In my case, I do believe I have to slow down and listen….but that’s tricky as well because the wind can be very loud and make you think the thing you’re listening to is coming from a different direction. The frustration of pushing through a relentless and seemingly impenetrable wall of darkness and wet. Did I mention how cold it is here? No sunlight can make its way through those clouds, nuh-uh. So here we are, drenched to the skin, cold and shivering, can’t see any way that looks right, and we’re hearing things. It feels like it will never end. We are lost in turmoil.

There is, however, a blessing in turmoil:  it shows one where the problem is.  Kind of like physical pain, it’s unpleasant, but without it we’d have a much more difficult time finding the source of infection.

So, do I really trust in God? Or is it a hoped for job that I trust in? Once that job appears we can finally do all the things we’ve wanted to do, like…go to Disney World, or landscape the yard finally, or even buy some other property and build our own dream house!  But…now that I think of it, that all sounds really quite superficial…and it’s pretty well known that  God and “superficial” don’t mix too well.

What if there is no job? Do I turn and curse God shouting,”YOU DIDN’T GIVE ME WHAT I WANTED!” or do I sink into the dark recesses of myself and say ”Why did I go through all of this? For nothing?!?” or maybe just an ”I give up” will suffice.  Or can I look to God and say, in spite of my circumstances, what Job (who lost EVERYTHING) said, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15) and really believe it? I don’t know why we’re going through the things we are, I don’t understand why this one thing seems to be so impassable, but I have faith that God has not abandoned us. That’s what faith is, believing without seeing, walking headlong into the rain, one step after another.

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” (Psalm 23:4)

The “shadow of death”, apparently not actual death, just the shadow of it, and shadows can’t hurt anyone.  Sure they can loom frighteningly in the distance and scare the crap out of you, but they can’t really touch you.  Then, there is the rest of the passage:

“…I will fear not, You are with me.” (Psalm 23:4)

Not I feel You are with me, not I see You are with me…just “You ARE with me”, and if God is with me, who can be against me? (Romans 8:31)

If God is with you, who can be against you? And He IS with you.  And because of that, we keep walking…one step at a time, one day at a time.  It is a fact of nature that no storm lasts forever. :)