I work two jobs: housekeeping at an inn and laundry at a motel. So when I was offered a managers position, I excitedly debated the pros and cons. The $10,000/yr raise really made the decision easy though I told no one.
Every evening while I wash, dry, and fold motel laundry, I listen to audiobooks or videos of the leading motivational business and spiritual leaders of the world. I get excited about personal goals and possibilities. That’s why the raise seemed like it fit into all I had learned subconsciously from these speakers and leaders. And then two nights ago, I was listening to one who said that he was poor making a $100,000. What? I replayed it again and again. Poor at $100,000?
I remembered telling a guest about the mills that I live across from, how they were apartments now and art studios. Today I looked across the street at the familiar long three story brick buildings and realized that in anyone else’s eyes these were project buildings where ‘poor people’ lived. I had never considered myself poor. I mean I have been poor, hungry, jobless, one day from homeless. But I hadn’t worried about rent, heat, or gas in two years.
Yesterday I checked my bank account to see if I could afford a monthly $7.99 picmonkey subscription. That should have been a red flag about my finances. At a poor $100,000, I wouldn’t have had to debate cancelling Planet Fitness membership so I could create photo art.
What did I do so wrong with my life, Lord? What path did I so mistake for the right path? I mean, Lord, I can’t pick up the pieces of my life to make it even appear to be vaguely like I had dreamed of when young.
Discouraged Lord? You bet!
But what I discovered is that God listens and no matter what the spiritualists and gurus say, God cares as a Father to His Children. “Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!”
Despite the cloud of unknowing and the shadow of irrefutable regret, I returned to all I loved to do even though its worth was far far less than $100,000, but so much more in creative joy. The comfortable fit of who I am and who I am in Christ returned. “Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you because God the Father has set His seal on Him.”
Indeed maybe I should just set the bar higher for it is written “For with God nothing is impossible.”