Good morning and hello my Father
I have been avoiding writing to you like the plague.
I haven't written because it hurts to speak to you, because I pour out my heart to you and I feel and see very little come back. I feel like I always have, left on the sidelines with no clear direction other than to "be" and to live. So many around me who are protestant evangelicals are always speaking of how God has a plan for "your" life and to know it is to simply ask Him! I find that so very humorous since I have been asking for thirty years and nothing is spoken but instead I experience. I experience life. I wake up, I work, I love my wife and I go to sleep, nothing special or specific there. I walk through my days and some are simple such as cleaning my house or mowing the yard or making dinner but there is no bulletin board from heaven showing the way to God's special plan for Me. Protestants make such a big deal of finding your calling, understanding your purpose in God's master plan, well, what if there ISN'T any???
Will I get kicked out because I'm still benched? Will they take away my Follower of Christ card? (no such thing) I feel like they are expecting something to break any day now and the light from above will shine down and a voice will speak and everyone around me will hear and know God is my Father and He has a special plan for me and then all of them will back off and leave me alone because Then and only then will they believe that I am "part of the club". What if I have already lived my special purpose? What if that part of God's intricate plan for my life already came and went and now all I have is to live until I die from old age? Only God knows what else lays ahead in my life and He doesn't seem to be sharing and I am getting tired and exhausted with asking and looking and listening. I give up, I put up the white flag of surrender and I quit! Do you hear me God? Do you see what I have written and do you get that I am done chasing after my purpose? It never was such a major point in my life until I met these type A Christians and all of a sudden it's like "if you are really filled with the Holy Spirit then you have a special job on earth." Well I am sorry but there are a world of people around me and I am sure many are filled with the Holy Spirit and very few of them actually stand out and I may very well turn out like them.
I'm tired and I am fed up with disappointment, disappointment that God has been so silent. My mom loved me but didn't get involved with special things that happened in my life. That left me feeling as though I don't know, I'm an interruption or an inconvenience. My earthly dad was an angry and unhealthy man and bellowed at my mother for almost everything until I was 9 and then he died of a heart attack and life became very peaceful and very smooth. My dad had been the greatest source of fear and dread in my house and my mom and me walked on eggshells until he was gone, God granted us peace through that. So mom was the only parent to be present for me and the couple of times something was going on, she wasn't there. Don't know why but she never showed and I didn't get to see any look of pride or praise on her face, it would have helped make me feel as though I wasn't an inconvenience or as my older brother put it, "an oops baby." Like I was an biological accident not intended for and not planned for....like I said an inconvenience. All through grade school from my first day I was a magnet for any other kid who wanted to find a punching bag. I was the butt of many jokes and other kids called me fatso, slow, never wanted me on their dodgeball team....you get the picture and now I feel in a way God is doing the same thing. Yes He loves me and created me and yes His son Jesus chose to die for me and save me from my sins but He did that for all of humanity at the same time, those who had lived and died, those who were present with Him and those for centuries to come until His return and He begins the new heaven and the new earth. All that stuff about Jesus doing that just for me if I were the only one sounds nice and all and it gets people teared up but the fact remains it was for any and all who believe in Him, not just for me.
I can do some things, I can sing okay and carry a tune and I like singing in church or anywhere praise and worship music is being played. I can fix things like cars and some mechanical things around the home. My mind works like an engineer and I am always pondering on how I would make it work better, how I would build it better or some things are just stupid and a waste of money. I love my wife and she loves me and we are the most in love couple I know even after 36 years. If it wasn't for her I would have no one because we never had children, not by choice but it just never happened. Not that we didn't try but after two years we saw the handwriting on the wall and stopped. We thought about adoption but both of us were afraid of making a mistake and we would have felt horrible to have to give the child back not because of the child but because of us. If we couldn't cut the mustard as parents. She had okay examples of parenting and I came from a father who beat my older brother and possibly sexaully assaulted my older sister so I felt I had the makings of a disaster waiting to happen in some poor child's life and I just couldn't do that so we moved on with life.
So maybe, I guess some things in life maybe she and I could have pushed through, some things maybe we could have stepped out in faith and tried in order to give some child a decent home and some love but instead we shut the door in fear and doubt and maybe we missed part of a plan God had for our life and we let that chapter pass us by and now we face going into our elder years with no one to look out for us. I have a nephew from my sister but with his bad health he may beat me to the pearly gates. There are many other points in my life where I feel I should have turned and gone another way. Are they regrets? Oh yes, I have many, none of them having to do with my wife but rather my work career. If I had taken a job that was offered to me I could have eventually run my own business but instead I chose to stay with safe and secure with benefits and my old boss took it out of my flesh pound for pound over a 17 year period. Eventually he retired and put me in for his job which I felt was a huge accomplishment and a gift from God though it was just another hard leg of my career there and yes I did get to retire with a lifetime retirement benefit which I enjoy today but it cost me very much. My job caused problems and arguments at home, fear and stress plagued me for years because my old boss was So much like my dad and lost control and threw tantrums at the drop of a hat. Want to talk about damaged goods, this guy was like a crate of turnips that had fallen off a truck and was broken to almost splitting open. Working for him kept me on pins and needles for years. His old saying was, "shit flows down hill." Many of us who worked for him understood We were at the catch basin and we were the turds because we caught it all the time. Getting promoted under him in his department was no small feat and I considered it a miracle seeing as his level of feelings of inadequacy were off the charts and he considered threats to his job coming from any direction was a cause for vehement retribution.
I made other mistakes and one was really big and though I repented and begged for God to get me through it and to please correct the possible pain that I could have inflicted on others it was still a hard row to hoe and it involved personal and marriage counseling, deep spiritual searching inside myself and a severing of a relationship that spanned over two decades. More of a friendship that went wrong and only in my mind not in the real world. My life has turned out how I chose it so far, I do not believe I have walked a path of God's plan for my life because it would not have led through possibly breaking up of two marriages and children that were involved. I had many times said to God to please lead me where He wanted me and there were months and even weeks, days sometimes where I was looking on the horizon line for something to break, something to open up for me to get out of where I worked and away from that constant fear of being fired and for Nothing! I would have had no recourse to fight for my job because that boss of mine had others twisted around his finger so tight that they feared him too. I longed for a place to work where I could just do my job with peace and no fear but it never came even after he left and I took over the department then I got harassment from those who were once fellow workers and now were under my direction and authority. I chose to stay and tough it out for another 11 years and when the time came to walk out the door and not look back I did it with sorrow and a broken heart because I did have friends that I wasn't going to see on Monday, the daily jokes and the friendship that coworkers develop over time that wouldn't be there for me anymore because I retired but I went away knowing I left the place and the people in much better condition than before.
It's been almost ten years since that time and I have floated with no clear direction other than to stay away from jobs like my old one and sometimes I feel as though God has chosen to bless me with early retirement for the years of suffering I endured and suffering it surely was and I wasn't the only one that suffered there were many others. Where is God's plan in all of that? Isn't it supposed to look like a neat orderly plan where we move from step A to step B and C and all along the way we obtain graces and gifts and we become part of some great revival of the faith? Some people Have lived that kind of life and have served God directly and have brought faith and hope to others who were impoverished and felt abandoned but that wasn't everyone's reality.
