Month: January 2021

What am I going to be when I grow up?

crookedroadfaith
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There is an old saying if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans. All I have to say is if this statement is even half true, God must be having a laugh-riot up in heaven watching my life these days.

It’s not enough that the majority of the past year has been spent in lockdown craziness or that our entire society seems to have lost its ever-loving mind, becoming more and more polarized and unwilling to hear – let alone accept – another person’s point of view. No, whatever lunatic life-planner that designed my life from start to finish decided that I needed an incessant gnat of a challenge to a time when a little peace would be ever so welcome.

I am supposed to be entering a time in life where things should be getting easier, I have somehow been transported back to junior high where the mean kids rule, there’s no visible escape route, and whatever I thought my life would look like at this point has completely evaporated

I had so many hopes when I was a kid. I was certain that when I became an adult, I would be able to escape the abusive people in my life and would be doing something meaningful with my life. No, I wasn’t one of those kids who always knew what they wanted to be when they grew up, but I did have dreams and wishes about the future. Maybe I would be the first singing veterinarian/human physician in the state of Colorado or maybe the journalist my mom had hoped I would be maybe a soccer mom with lots of volunteer work to keep me busy. Regardless of the specifics, I felt certain I would be able to overcome, to find a track for my life in which I would not only be successful but fulfilled.

I was wrong.

Instead, at 54 I have worked in numerous roles in a multitude of industries and feeling just as lost as I did when I graduated high school or college. Not only do I wonder what went wrong, but I feel like an absolute failure and wonder how I can ever find a way to make something meaningful out of my life.

To be fair, I have done some things that I have made an impact and that I have truly enjoyed, but I haven’t ever had what anyone would consider a career track. Instead, I have moved from role to role gathering lots of skills and abilities along the way but never ending up in a situation where all the pieces clicked together enough to create even a stepstool, let alone a ladder, to lead me anywhere.

I know I have no one to blame but myself. I am not someone that easily asks for help and thanks things that have happened in my past, the people I do turn to for help turn out to be the abusive, manipulative types that reinforce my feelings of failure and inadequacy proving to myself over and over that I’m not worth anything more than what I have.

As a person of faith, I know that I have been placed here to learn and to grow, not just to fulfill some professional goal or other, and I know that growth is always painful (that’s why they call them ‘growing pains’, after all). I also believe that the God I know is a God of love, not punishment and that He has given me tools to succeed.

While I am somewhat at a loss about is what this loving God has equipped me to do as far as a career or how on earth am I supposed to make my way to this unknown destination, I have realized that I after having had flashbacks to junior high mean girls and bullies, I have now realize I need to find the thing that makes my heart sing and trust that God will show me a way to make that joy pay the bills as well.

Of course, if anyone wants to give me a winning lottery ticket in the meantime, I won’t argue. 😉

Erosion

crookedroadfaith

Isolation is an interesting thing. It is, on the one hand, the space in which one can think, rest, recover and gather strength and on the other, it is the place where that peace can be destroyed, where thoughts can destroy the opportunity for rest and strength is sapped by the feelings of emptiness and loss.

This past year, the pandemic has put nearly all of us in places where we have yearned for some semblance of normality to return only to be bombarded by one piece of negative news upon another. It has begun to feel as though who we are as individuals and as a country has been slowly eroded away like the face of a statue on the shoreline, the never-ending spray of sea and salt washing away the individual features that made us each unique and wonderful.

I am sure that I’m not alone in feeling like that constant battering of sand against my face has worn me down to nothing. Not only has the comfort of normality been removed from our daily lives, but I personally have felt beaten down by the circumstances I have been in. A little less than a year ago, I began a new job hoping that by moving back to something I had been successful at before, I would gain a stronger sense of success and worth; that by going back down a road I had been on before, I would be able to relocate the me that I feel like I lost along the way but whoever that was, she is no longer there and I am here, lost and alone in the middle of a path I no longer recognize.

Perhaps I feel this way because I have been alone for so long, waiting and longing for that to change but unable to find another person with whom I connected well (or at all, honestly, because let’s be real – dating after 50 is challenging at best). Maybe I feel this way because at the time in my life that I would have been focused on figuring out what I wanted to be when I grew up, I was more focused on digging myself out of the rubble of abuse and finding a way to create a “me” that looked more like the warrior I knew I was instead of the victim I was told I should be.

Despite what you may think, I am truly proud of the things I have overcome and the person that I have become as a result. I have strength that I know others do not, insights I couldn’t have gathered any way other than being where I’ve been, and skills I’ve obtained through sheer necessity. If I could stand outside of myself and see who I am with a critical eye, I think I might be impressed by who stood in front of me. But as it is, I see failure after failure; brokenness and insecurity where strength and self-worth should be. I am fearful to take that next step forward for fear of another failure but also know that there is no going back.

So where does that leave me?

I honestly don’t know.

What I do know is I am here for a reason. I know there is a God that has placed me here at this time in this situation and that because He is a God of love and omnipotence, that the end is a place of goodness. And I know that, as I’ve said over and over throughout the years, me being here at this time is not really about me but about a greater good which I in my humanity am completely unable to comprehend.

Despite all of this knowledge that God does and will prevail, I am tired. I yearn for a time to feel I am right where I’m supposed to be, doing exactly what I was created to be doing, and able to share these things with others – maybe even one specific “other”. Maybe that time is just around the corner. Maybe the winds will cease, the erosion will end, and the One who created me will show me that even the formless nothing I have become has meaning and purpose…

…or maybe I’ll just be that eroded lump of rock you step around next time you’re at the shore.