Praying for stability

I don't like uncertainty. I don't like instability. I don't like not-knowing. I don't like thinking there are multiple possible outcomes to a situation, some of which are bad.

Two big areas of my life are uncertain right now. I've talked at length about the uncertainty at work. Other people I've talked to are angry at what they perceive as "unfairness" (and there may be some, where some people - those who can complain loudest or who "know where the bodies are buried" - don't have to face the same cuts the other people do). I don't have the energy to be angry or suspicious; I'm just sad over the whole thing, and worried about what my employment will be like in the future.

But also today, I was reminded: the six-month "trial period" for our minister is up this week. I like him fine, but I tend to be less-critical than a lot of people and I also tend to assume we're not going to get the equivalent of Billy Graham or Fred Craddock on what we can offer and with a congregation our size. But I'm afraid there's going to be enough of a voting bloc that thinks "We can do better" or "I don't care what happens but this is how I think" and then we're back to square one, doing a search that might last a year and.....I don't know? Leaning on laypeople to fill the pulpit? If that happens, we may fold - whenever we are "between ministers" we lose people.

So I don't know. I'm just so tired. SO TIRED. I've cried more this week than I have in a very long time. I keep praying for something in my life to be settled but also for me to keep the grace to hold my tongue when someone says something I object to, or when someone is demanding stuff of me, or, I don't know, when someone isn't understanding. I suspect I can keep my grace but right now not starting to tear up is probably what I need to ask for (Strength? Maybe?)

It doesn't help that my allergies are currently really atrocious and are in the point where it makes me feel like the whole world is covered in sort of a gray fuzz. (I get sort of weepy and dysphoric when my allergies are bad). I'm taking as high a dose of antihistamine as I safely can so I can't do anything more there; I just have to endure this. I just have to endure EVERYTHING.

I don't know. It's too late (and I'm facing too-severe budget restrictions) to consider traveling for spring break but now I kind of wish I HAD planned to go visit my parents; I would just be nice to have someone else cook for me for a week, and be able to sit and knit without worrying about cleaning the house or doing grading or getting work done or working in the yard or any of the stuff I think about when I'm at home. Or just to have people who care about me THERE. I mean, yes, I can talk to them on the phone but it is not the same as sitting around the table with them or having them in the same room.

I know I'm not really alone but I feel alone a lot of the time. I know, the answer is to "keep on keepin' on" as they say, but I'm SO TIRED.  And sleeping more doesn't help; I keep dreaming that my house is falling apart and I am incapable of fixing it.


I am really hoping this is NOT some kind of a "push" that is telling me "You need to move to another part of the country and change careers" but the last time stuff kind of went to crud in my life, it was shortly before I was asked to leave the first graduate program I was a part of and I'm wondering if I should have recognized the "GET OUT NOW" signs earlier in that, and if these are "GET OUT NOW" signs. I will say if the congregation I belongs to folds, that's one really big thing gone that is a thing making me want to stay here.

I think that's a big part of my distress: somewhere deep in my subconscious I am going "Is this University of Michigan, 1990, all over again?" and I don't know, I don't know, and that's what's killing me.


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I dunno. I need to eat something. And then I need to go and sew. At least I didn't kill my sewing machine by mistake this week. At least with making stuff it's one case where I feel like I have some control. (I think that's a big part of it; I feel like everything around me in the world is slipping off it's axis, it's going to affect me badly, and I HAVE NO CONTROL over what is happening)