"I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken."

            It’s been seven months since I moved back home.

And it’s about time I get to write this blog post.

I took a job in North Carolina after college and proceeded to be miserable for fifteen months.

I can look back on that time now and see the things I needed to be taught by God, the things I desperately needed to learn on my own, and how being utterly alone for a little while did both tremendous good in so many ways for me.

I thought about leaving NC a lot during the year and a half I was there. Working a terrible schedule, coming home to a cat and no friends every single night, and dealing with drama from multiple coworkers makes one question what the point of everything is.

But I held on. My parents supported my every decision, but they were worried about me like good parents should be and encouraged me coming back home.

But I still held on.

I’ve never been very good about hearing God’s voice, whether through instinct or hearing the Holy Spirit whisper to my heart. My usual thoughts go something like, “Was that God? No, it was probably just indigestion.”

But when I was in North Carolina, I kept having this feeling like I should stay till December. It wasn’t like I saw the word December written in a burning bush or physically heard God say, “Stay till December,” I just thought, yeah, that makes sense.

So when December came, I knew that it was time for me to leave. Through different things that happened the last month or so, it became obvious it was time for me to go. I had learned everything I was going to learn, and I so strongly felt that God was telling me I was done there. That He had a new plan for me.

If I had known His plan was for me to live at home with no job or prospects for seven months, I might not have moved back.

So thank God He didn’t reveal that to me.

It’s funny, I actually had this confident thought that I was going to live at home for three months, find an awesome job in Knoxville, and move out by the fifth month.

I thought giving God three months was ample time for Him to find me a job. I wasn’t even asking for the perfect job. I just wanted to work somewhere I could be proud of.

It is very possible that I will look back later in life on these past seven months as being the most trying time of my life.

I won’t bore you with all of the emotions and ups and downs I went through since January. It would take too long. What I will do is tell you about the past two months.

Actually, I’ll start about three ish months ago.

I decided a little over three months ago that it had been too long since I moved home, that I needed to do something about not having had a job since December. So I thought the best course of action was to get a random part time job.

It’s not all that hard to get a part time job at the mall when you have a college degree. So I quickly found a job at a clothing store in the mall, went in for an interview, and was offered the job the next day. Which I didn’t take.

In between me going home after the interview and the call the next day, things got bad. I hate saying phrases like mental breakdown or emotional meltdown because do you know how dramatic that sounds? I have worked ridiculously hard since high school to not be that dramatic kid, and I will violently push aside any hints of drama that come about these days.

If you need a laugh or just a break from all this talking, here's something to brighten up your day. 

So let’s just call it a slip.

I slipped on my own brain and fell down hard.

I was angry at God for having to resort to working at a clothing store in the mall. I was angry my college degree that I worked my butt off to get suddenly seemed worthless. I was angry that I have never not had to work hard to get something for myself. I was angry that I was a 24 year old college graduate living at home with my parents without a job, single as can be.

I could feel myself becoming a bitter person, and that’s honestly something I never thought I would become. I didn’t deserve to have a part time job, I deserved to be living in New York writing short stories and making millions of dollars. I deserved to be in Los Angeles working as a casting director for big blockbusters.

So I turned down the part time job and let myself become overwhelmed with bitterness. It was so much easier that way.

Fast forward to a little over a month ago. I still have no job, I still am living at home.

This is a little bit what I looked like.

I’m not even sure what spurred me on to start volunteering. Maybe it was watching my mother volunteer at the hospital every week or thoughts back to when I volunteered at a hospital in North Carolina. Whatever it was, I abandoned all thought of a part time job to fill my days and started looking for a place to volunteer.

That’s when I stumbled onto The Salvation Army.

For those of you who don’t know, The Salvation Army of Knoxville houses men, women, and children. Which means they need to feed the residents three times a day. They have a few paid workers who make the food and serve it, but they desperately need help. That’s where I came in.

As odd as it may sound, I fell in love with The Salvation Army from the first day I volunteered. It’s a simple shift: Help prepare the lunch, serve the lunch cafeteria-woman-style to the residents, help clean up, help start dinner.

Maybe it was the fact that I finally wasn’t always thinking about me me me. Maybe it was the fact that even though some of these men who lived there who I served lunch to have miserable, sad lives, they can still be cheerful as they go through my lunch line, still crack jokes with me and make me smile, still thank me countless times over for doing something so simple as feeding them a meal.

I think sometimes we forget just how powerful a smile or a laugh or a silly, corny joke can be. When these men come through my line and tell me jokes that don’t even make sense but they crack themselves up just telling it, when they smile at me, some of them missing teeth or just having scary grins similar to that of Michael Fassbender, when they tell me I should come more than two days a week because I’m the nicest cafeteria lady they’ve ever had, I go home with a full heart.

I was having a conversation with a woman the other day from a church I’ve been attending and we were talking about how I don’t have a job and volunteering and everything, I found myself telling her that I was glad right now I didn’t have a job because The Salvation Army has been the best thing in the world for me.

I couldn’t believe the words came out of my mouth.

On the drive home that night, I felt for the first time in seven months that everything would be okay. Yes, I was constantly stressed about finding a job, yes, I was still living at home, yes, I didn’t have much going for me in my life, but it was okay.

Sidenote, that song has become my anthem. So thanks, Matt Thiessen. 

I gave my whole life to God several years ago, and got a tattoo on my body to remind me of that: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

I got these words tattooed on my body for a reason: To have a constant, visible reminder that it doesn’t matter how I think my life should go. It belongs to God.

If he wants me to be without a job for seven months, okay.

Please understand, I do not in any way say those words lightly. I teared up just writing them down. It has taken me seven months to be able to really really really believe them.

I found Psalm 37 today completely by accident, and I think David, the author, must have found some kind of time machine, traveled to our time, observed my life the past few months, then written this chapter for me and about me.

“… Trust in the LORD and do good… Take delight in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD; trust in Him and He will do this: He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn, your vindication like the noonday sun. Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for Him… Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret – it leads only to evil… The meek will inherit the land and enjoy peace and prosperity… The LORD laughs at the wicked, for He knows their day is coming… The LORD upholds the righteous… The wicked borrow and do not repay, but the righteous give generously… The LORD makes firm the steps of the one who delights in Him; though he may stumble, he will not fall, for the LORD upholds him with His Hand… I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken… The LORD loves the just and will not forsake his faithful ones… Hope in the LORD and keep His Way… The salvation of the righteous comes from the LORD; He is their stronghold in time of trouble. The LORD helps them and delivers them; he delivers them from the wicked and saves them, because they take refuge in Him.”

I know this post is very long, but bear with me just a moment longer.

I have a job now. It took seven months and 217 job applications, but it is here. It is only temporary for right now because it’s through a temp agency, so I am only guaranteed two months’ full time work. So I still can’t move out of my parents’ house, I still can’t be an Independent Adult, whatever that means.

But I don’t even care.

If this job doesn’t work out full time, if in two months the company decides not to ask me to stay on, I will be sad, but I won’t fall into despair.

God knows what’s up and what He’s doing.

I might think He’s crazy, I might question His timing, I might yell and scream and cry at Him for making me go through incredibly hard and lonely times, but in the end, my life is not my own. It belongs to God. And He is big enough and generous enough that I should always always always trust Him with it.

It sounds so simple when you write it out like that.

I’m taking this quote out of context, but there’s a Sherlock Holmes story where Sherlock yells at someone, “Your life is not your own, keep your hands off it.”

How very, very true, my darling Sherlock.