NEVER! GIVE! UP! Pt 2: "I respect your decisions"

I was in Walmart, making a quick stop on the way to work, grabbing a couple $0.98 bags of veggies because my ground turkey spoiled due to my forgetting it in the car that morning. I have been under enough stress for enough time that I am forgetting things and really spaced a lot of the time. It has affected my performance at work, and that morning at the end of my shift, the supervisor had said I had been there long enough to remember what I needed to be doing better than I was. Since this is a temp-to-hire position, I am easily dismissed and replaced, and am on trial to see if I should be hired in full time, that was a very disturbing thing to hear, but I knew it was coming and I knew it was true. I have been through this "anxiety fog" as I recently learned it is called, before. Anxiety and huge amounts of prolonged stress have had a lot of negative effects on my health over the years. It has often affected things I otherwise and other times excel at -like school and work. I guess what happens is you get enough stress hormone hitting your brain and it starts to slow your brain down. It inhibits the encoding of new memories or the retrieval of already encoded memories you are reaching for, and etc. It makes it very hard to learn anything or get much done.
So here I was, about to face the same workplace again, full of shame, even more stressed because of the effects of the physical effects of all the stress. I had about $3 to my name, a quarter tank of gas and two days to survive until pay day.
I was telling God I was sorry for the waste, as that food was resources he blessed me with and I had not taken care of it right. I felt like I almost always feel these days - like a failure.
I know this is not the life God wants for me, and I have put a lot of effort - prayerful effort - in for a lot of years to try to get better. It has not really worked out so well at this time. I have made progress on things like fear and anxiety. A lot of progress. It seems I have still not made quite enough progress though.
I was in a hurry, realized I was on the wrong side of wal-mart and was heading for the grocery section, trying to remember what I was there for.
Suddenly I hear the Spirit speak to me inside, so clearly. "I respect your decisions."
I thought of someone I knew who had similar struggles in the work place and went on disability. Until that and to some extent after that, she was a prostitute. I have been approached quite a few times when I lived in the ghetto by people wanting to pay me to - well, to surrender my values and my dignity. I never went for it, of course.
I have stepmother who used to be stripper. The enemy has said "You'd only have to do it a couple of times, to get enough to..." I know its a trap, and I know it is something i would live with forever. I want my life to please God. Even if I could cope with it psychologically (which I doubt), I could not cope with it spiritually.
There are a lot of people who have told me to go find a man to take care of me. I've worked with other women at really awful jobs that were unhealthy and dangerous and breaking loads of labor laws. Some of them quit when they found a man to move in with. Even if that kind of decision making didn't place you in a very high risk of abuse - which it does - and also very likely to end up in worse shape when the relationship ends and you have nowhere to go and a gap in your employment - which it does - it would not be morally right. A guy at this job used to sell drugs, and recently he quit and went to work elsewhere. To pull me leg he told me he was going back to selling drugs, though I think he found a job in Elkhart that paid more. I choose to honor God, and I have never seriously considered any of these behaviors to be an option. Seriously, I never have. I guess a lot of people do it though. I also have never shoplifted anything.
A Christian friend of mine who shows me enormous respect has told me if he was in my shoes and faced the obstacles I face or have faced, he would give up and just "prostitute my life away." He said this, not to say I should do that, but to say he believes I am strong, and he sees power in me, and potential and accomplishment, regardless of what my bottom line may look like.
"I respect your decisions" God knows that the things I have done and not done, the "opportunities" be they shady or not, that I have turned down, including dropping out of Saint Louis University, were done to follow the plan I believe He has for me. I knew I had a certain call that could not be followed with massive amounts of debt. At SLU, I would have had to take on MASSIVE student loan debt while neither learning what I needed to learn for the call I was preparing to answer, nor gaining skills that were likely to pay off that debt very soon. I left Saint Louis, MO because I was afraid of being out of work and homeless in a big dangerous city very far from anyone I knew, plus having my credit ruined almost as soon as it was established due student loan defaults. The risk was too great, and the prospects too slim. I had 1.5 months of rent left in the bank and it was from student loans. I had no job, and while getting applications at places, sometimes they would answer more than one call and say, "No we are not hiring right now" while I waited to get the application! It happened multiple times. Maybe I should have stayed and gave it a shot for that one more month, but in any case I did not. Only God knows what would have happened if I had. Only He knows what I lost, if anything. The fact is, just because I have been through some of the same things I feared that caused me to leave there does not mean I would have avoided them if I stayed.
I took a little plastic container of beans i had leftover form the previous day's lunch and those two bags of veggies. Somehow I only got through the beans in the 12 hour shift. I get paid tomorrow, and I still have the veggies now. Unopened. Maybe He multiplied them, I don't know. I just know and am thankful that I am all right. I had a much better night at work, and I even have an understanding with my supervisors and my work partner about the condition I'min right now. "He clothes the the righteous with favor as with a shield," ad I praise Him for it.

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This society harbors enormous and unfounded hatred for people in my financial bracket; there are many stereotypes and a lot of ugly statistics, but I have not become any of those statistics or stereotypes. God knows that, and God knows He is the reason why. God honors me for that, and God's opinion is the only one that really counts.
And that is all there is to it. Godspeed.

NEVER! GIVE! UP!

There are times when life throws us curveballs. I have been in one of those times lately.
I went to a fledgling faith-based,artist/environmentalist commune. The woman who owned the house turned out not to be much of an environmentalist and certainly not someone suited to community life. She was paranoid and mistrustful and faultfinding.
It is no longer a community house. Her husband figured out that was a pipe dream after her behavior with just me and their family there, so there is no community house now. Also he said the area was full of thriving businesses and "now hiring"signs. A factory closed the week I moved in, and those signs disappeared very quickly. I went to the IL work one center and the search turned up 216 jobs in a 50 mile radius. The staff at the IL Work One center said that was extremely bad. It was a small enough town almost everybody had something in common and had high likelihood of knowing someone in common with an interviewer. I was an outsider.
I went back to where I came from, and my dad's violently insane wife verbally and mentally abused me, threatened me physically on a regular basis and eventually she declared me her "enemy" and the threats - no promises at that point - of physical violence got to a point I grabbed a few things and fled to a shelter.
I had just started a new job through a temp service,and had expected to leave and go to a hotel as soon as I got my first check, which was about a week and a half. Unfortunately, the job had a lull in business and sent me home early almost every day.
On my second of third check I left the shelter. The motel I planned to check into was full and closed early. I went to one down the street that costed a little more,and then found out about Forler's Motel. It is a weird hotel where there is no housekeeping or room service and You have to clean it from top to bottom yourself when you leave. They do not furnish any cleaning supplies, except a vaccuum.
So on the second week I moved there until the temp job service laid me off.I found out 2 hours before my shift ended that I was not to return until further notice. I arranged to return to IL and stay with a friend while job hunting, and did several job applications online. For some reason, every time I called after filling out an application, I was told they could not find my application.
The day before I left for IL, the job I had called me back. I went to IL anyway and returned for my shift on Monday. I did not have enough for a week in a hotel, but I stayed at the one I had originally wanted to go to that was full before, and that was owned by the same people as Forler's.
My dad stepped in on the one check-less pay day and covered my deposit and a week's rent in Forler's.
I would be fine now,except I will have all my stuff thrown away in Kewanee If I do not get there soon and get it out of where it is.
So I will be returning to IL again for a weekend and, on a shoestring, getting my things moved, but not to where I currently am.
I am applying for 3rd shift jobs in Champaign IL so I can be close to friends, have a social life, access to Amtrak rail and therefore Chicago when I want or need to go, and above all, get back to school to pursue the dreams and goals I have.
WHEW! What a roller-coaster ride, and it is not over yet. I will never give up though, that is for sure. Stay tuned for a happy ending because it IS going to happen.
Godspeed.