I told you all about my game plan: to quit my job at Kroger for a cleaning job at Cedarville, with better hours, better pay, and more time in the afternoons for me to write. It sounded good, and I was excited to get started.
Until I actually got started. And I realized that it wasn't what I thought it would be.
I know there are growing pains with any jobs: I remember walking onto the back dock at Kroger on my third day nearly in tears because I really didn't want to do be in that place. It might not sound like it but there is a lot to learn with a custodial job, and after my first day I felt a little overwhelmed. But with lists from the girl that I was training with and helpful people left and right, I felt like I could handle it when I was turned loose to work by myself on the third day. And the work was never too hard: I always felt like I could do it. I was allowed to work at my own pace and listen to music and be left alone to get my responsibilities done. Nobody checked up on me, nobody babysat me, nobody nitpicked over something I had done. After four years of micromanagement and bullshit at Kroger, it was a welcome change.
And then I realized just how early 3.15am comes these days. I realized how long a forty-minute drive to and from really was. I realized that my old truck was burning a quarter-tank of gas every day, and that $70 a week in gas adds up after a while. I realized that, while the work was handle-able, it was constant for eight hours a day; and by the time I had driven up to the college, worked for eight hours a day, and driven forty minutes home, all I wanted to do was shower and crash on the couch.
And there's another thing that I didn't bargain for. They put me in the theatre where I spent so much of my time as a student. I remember my sister parading down the hallways with a binder and a coffee cup, ready to start another show and stage-manage somebody. I walked past the posters of shows I had been part of: "Hello Dolly," "Pride and Prejudice," "The 39 Steps" that no show to come will ever top. I saw the faces of the people I had grown up with. I was in and out of the dressing rooms where I crammed with thirty girls, each hula-hooped in crinoline and doused in hairspray.
I am nostalgic, dear friends. And I hid in the dressing room two days in a row and bawled: nothing felt the same, when I so expected it to feel like coming home.
So on Friday night, after a pretty impressive meltdown to Joey, I decided to send out some feelers: I loved the cleaning part of the job, and I messaged about twenty people asking if they needed someone to come clean their houses regularly. The responses were immediate, and I spent all the next day fielding messages and filling my agenda book. I didn't have quite enough regular customers to make a consistent income, so I said, "I'll wait until I get a few more answers before I do anything."
On Sunday morning I was laying in bed, thinking about this potential next step. And I swear to you, as clear as day, I heard something inside me say, "Quit your job."
There was no way I could commit to the people I had heard from until I was no longer attached to Cedarville. And so, on Sunday morning, with only my part-time job at the orthodontist's office and a handful of houses to clean, I called my boss at Cedarville and said I wouldn't be coming in on Monday.
I woke up on Monday morning unemployed. I woke up on this Monday morning still unemployed. I signed up for uncertainty week to week what hours I'll be working; I have no idea how much (or how little) money I will make. I have never, as a viable adult, not had a traditional, clock-in-clock-out job.
I have never been more certain that this is what I'm supposed to do.
Guys, I'm supposed to be a writer. After forcing myself into a teaching degree and hunting for receptionist jobs that I'm not even sure I'd be right for and running around like a maniac as I waited for some kind of answer, that has always been the underlying answer. And it's not traditional: it goes against everything that I am to say, "I'm a writer and I clean houses on the side." I'm looking at an average of fifteen to twenty hours of work every week, where my soon-to-be husband pulls forty or fifty; and I think, "I'm not pulling my weight, I'm living my dream while he's busting his ass." (He says I shouldn't think like that, but it's my biggest fear that I'm not helping us financially as much as I should.)
But this is bigger than following a dream. Guys, this is a leap of faith. It sounds really cheesy to say it, and I'm sorry if it sounds cheesy to hear it. But while I don't subscribe to the "I'll sit back and wait for God to bless me" mindset, I do believe that I'm doing what God has called me to do, and the money will take care of itself. I lay in my bed on Sunday night and say, "God, I've sent out the emails, I've sent out the texts. I trust that You will provide me work that pays. And in the mornings, I will write - because that is the talent You've blessed me with and that is the calling that I have." During my meltdown to Joey, I bawled, "I don't know what I'm supposed to do." And that amazing man I get to marry held me tight and said, "You're supposed to write. So that's what you'll do." And I believe that, if I do the work and show myself willing, that God will provide work. He will bless my work. And we will be fine.
I'm still trying to get myself to believe it: I still panic a little as I've come to Monday morning and I have two days of work lined up for this week. I constantly have in mind the dollar amount in mind I need to make every week for us to "get by." But I believe that my God is faithful. I believe that He will bless us because of my leap. I believe that we will be blessed beyond our belief because I'm doing what He has called me to do. I believe that my God is my source, not my paycheck.
And I believe I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to do.
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