Gratitude and Trust
It’s been a little while since I’ve been this sensitive to tearing up unexpectedly. But I cried in the dentist’s office yesterday when they asked me if I wanted to pay the extra $300 to sedate myself in a future surgery; I cried because I would much rather be sedated than see them pulling out my teeth, but I didn’t know if I could afford it.
I cried today right after a phone interview that was cut short because I tried to honestly answer the question “can you stand on your feet for 8 hours?”, and when she sensed that the stand-up job wasn’t what I wanted she asked if I wanted to cancel the interview; I cried because I don’t know if I’m supposed to be picky and only apply for sit-down jobs or if I need to just suck it up and take whatever job might be offered to me.
I know that I’m not in the worst of situations; in fact, I’m pretty lucky right now! My sister and I bought a house last year that we both love living in, we both have steady part-time jobs, I have good friends, and there are plenty of things that I love to do in my community and my church.
And yet I’m super stressed out lately. I have random parts of my body that are always in pain (my feet and my shoulders) and even though I know there are people with much more debilitating and chronic pain than I have, it’s still stressful to have a job that just exacerbates it the more days I work in a row.
I’m also super stressed about finances. God keeps providing in some cool ways, but every time I think I might be able to see my savings grow rather than shrink, I have to fix my car or pull my teeth or something else comes up that takes another large chunk of money out of my account.
And I’m just tired of filling out job applications. I have filled out 73 since February, I’ve had probably 12 different interviews (both for jobs I didn’t really want and for jobs I really did) with no luck so far on either a full-time or a sit-down job. Someone tells me “oh I heard this place is hiring, you should check it out” and I think “maybe this is the one!”… but nothing has panned out yet.
This may not be the most dire of situations, but finding a good job and getting financially stable and keeping my pain at bay are all things that I have no control over. I have this strong, emotional weight over me that keeps coming out in the form of heavy sighs or random tears or just wanting to throw my laptop down and escape from job applications into all the Netflix shows. I keep praying and asking God again and again to “fix this”, but why hasn’t it changed yet?
I have had Nichole Nordeman’s song “Gratitude” running through my head lately. It’s about how we pray to Jesus for rain, and bread, and peace, and yet we still have to understand that He is good even if we don’t get what we want when we ask. When I wake up in the middle of the night with tooth pain and just cry that God would make all my problems go away, I may not wake up with a better job, but I do go to sleep with a stronger sense of God being next to me.
Nichole also does a song called “Every Season”, which talks about how she can see God in every season of life; in the joy of summer, in the change of fall, in the sleep of winter, in the new life of spring. Even though some seasons of life are “prettier” than others, God is still here and a part of it, and He’s working even if we don’t see it.
I don’t know when I’ll get another job; I don’t know if I’ll ever get my ideal job. What I do know is that God has not left me, and He’s not just enjoying watching me flounder. He’s using this season for a reason in my life, maybe to teach me how to trust Him better, maybe to give me stronger character, which I could always use. And at some point I will come out of the hibernation of winter and see new beginnings where it feels like it’s just been blizzarding desert. Until then, I will try to remember who’s got my back, and remember that He loves me more than I can imagine.
“We’ll give thanks to You, with gratitude,
In lessons learned in how to trust in You
That we are blessed beyond what we could ever dream
In abundance or in need,
And if You never grant us peace
But, Jesus, would You please?”