A fair struggle

Every day I wake up, get out of bed, and begin my “normal” routine for what my life has become. The question is “what has my life become?” I’m walking around trying to come up with some excuse for why things don’t turn out the way I want them to. I go over and over it in my head thinking there is a completely logical explanation for why my life has become a complete and utter failure of nonstop chaos and disappointment.

I keep thinking that a happy ending is going to come out of this. Like somehow my life is a movie, a very dramatic, spontaneous, chaotic, disruption of life type of movie where a happy ending always follows the rough edgings. But is it really an ending that I’m looking for? Somehow I feel like this is just the beginning. This is where it all starts. First, we come up with a plan. Then we go to school and create a new plan. Then we graduate school and again…..find a new plan. And we change our plans again..and again and….again. Because it’s not OUR plan that we’re living. It’s HIS plan. We don’t make our life. He already made it. We don’t pick and choose what things are going to look like. Sure, we try to create some big idea and dream up what our “perfect” life will be, but that’s not it. God has a sense of humor too. If you ask for a super power, he’ll grant you some keen ability to play wii bowling QUITE well, which you can choose to see as a super power. If you ask for a nice home and friendly neighbors, you’ll get a trailer in a park with lots of people. Some of which aren’t too bad and hey, you have good closet space and electricity. That’s all that really matters.

This doesn’t mean that dreams are not important. In fact, they’re extremely important. They are what drive us to do amazing things. God grants us gifts and abilities and passions. All of which we are to use to make the world a better place. That seems like a pretty big idea, but even if you are a customer service representative who answers phones allllll day long, you can still be a help. Being a friendly voice on the other end of the phone could be what one person needed. Maybe they’ve had bad luck with sales reps before and you helped them far more than anyone ever could. Maybe your job isn’t where all of your talent lies. Maybe you’re a good friend, parent, or supporter. Maybe your ability is to rescue a dog and promote shelters.

I feel like I always forget to be thankful for everything that I have and instead I sit here and whine about what I don’t have. These past few months life has seemed disastrous. No money, no job. Job interview, after job interview. Rejection, after rejection.  It has been an exhausting experience. It’s so draining and uneventful. I worked 3 jobs in college, barely making it. I hardly ever slept, I studied ALL the time, and I never went out with my friends. In fact, other than my roommates and people that I worked with, I didn’t have a lot of friends. I didn’t drink, I didn’t party…..I was what the college kids call “boring.” And I’m willing to admit that I was, in fact, boring.

I did everything right my whole life, thinking that somehow if I never broke a single rule, my life would end up being perfect. I’d get through school, get accepted to grad school, get the perfect job, the perfect house, and eventually the perfect boyfriend. Somehow, if I played by the rules all of these things would line up in a row and I’d never have to work so hard again. But life didn’t really give any of that.

Instead, this is what my life looked like:
I didn’t date in high school. I was in every extra curricular activity I could fit myself into (band, choir, showchoir, dance team, drama club, Spanish club, history club, pep club, upward bound, youth moose awareness group, and church praise band). I never drank. I never partied. I didn’t cuss. I didn’t do anything with guys (obviously, because I didn’t date). I just followed all the rules. Then, in college, the rules changed. Things became more socially acceptable, but I still couldn’t let myself go. I didn’t judge others for being a certain way. In fact, I encouraged them to have their fun and offered to pick them up. I was a complete and total weirdo. My first drink was on my 21^st birthday in Nashville, Tennessee. I had exactly one drink at the Hard Rock Café New Year’s Eve and then I took my friends, who’d been drinking all night, back to the hotel and made sure we were all safe and okay. It was MY birthday and I still couldn’t keep myself from being “motherly”.

Finally, I graduated college and started the job hunt. I went from working 3 jobs to barely working 1 on the weekends, which was not enough to float by. Somehow, I did EVERYTHING right. I followed ALL the rules, but then it lead me here. A girl who couldn’t afford to apply to graduate school sitting here in a trailer because she couldn’t afford the fancier places who is jobless and depressed of what her life became.

I can never tell if being good was who I always was or if I was just afraid to be anyone else. I’d convinced myself that being perfect would somehow fix all of the problems in the world. I became OCD about my appearance and my house and my car and everything has to have a place and be organized or the world will fall apart……or at least, I will. I don’t know how to be anything else. I always analyze everything and try to make a plan. Sometimes I think I need to close my eyes and just have faith that I’ll get there. I know God has a plan, but I can’t keep myself from constantly thinking ahead to the next thing. The thing we all need most is the ability to live in the moment. Someday, I’ll look back at my struggles and laugh at how awful they were and smile at how I made it through. Because, in the end, all we need in order to strive is a fair struggle.