Maybe it’s part depression but I don’t believe it all stems from that. I am referring to feeling like a failure. I have felt like a failure for most of my life.
Someone told me once that anyone can call anything they are doing a job or career, but if it isn’t making money then it’s really only a hobby. If that is true then some would say I have chosen to be a hobbyist for a career.
As I wrote in an earlier blog, I have had a lot of jobs. Some of those were second jobs such as scrubbing floors at grocery stores in the evenings or painting utility trailers at night. I have always done what I must to make an honest living. When I was younger those types of jobs didn’t bother me.
I am not too good to scrub floors or toilets or leave a shop grimy and grungy from working on cars all day.
In fact, I expected to do such things. After all, those actions build character and help keep the ego in check. God does require us to be humble and those type of jobs will certainly humble.
The title of this blog is “Failure to Communicate”. This is because I believed what should happen with paying my dues in performing such jobs as mentioned above, having faith that at some point I would get noticed by someone for my writing abilities and moving up the ladder of success in life both financially and for recognition of my writing desire was always right around the corner.
I WAS WRONG!
The Lord and I were certainly not on the same page. And since He is writing the book of our lives, He can put me on any page He wishes at any time He wishes. There was obviously a failure to communicate between myself and the Creator.
One has to remember from earlier posts that I never asked to be a writer or have such an overwhelming desire to write. This inclination to wrangle words was given to me by God.
So why keep dangling the carrot in front of me and not let me have a bite?
I really was the proverbial jack-ass that kept following the carrot always thinking that I was one step closer to a bite.
On the morning of the Oklahoma City bombing, I became a father. As a result, two things happened. The first was the discovery of a new type of hope for the future of my family. The other was that for the first time since I heard the voice I began to tune it out… I wanted to do the right thing for my daughter and for my son who came 14 months later.
It was time to put away childish hobbies as it were and to stop chasing the carrot. I soon discovered that I could ignore the voice to a certain degree but desire would just use a new method of forcing me to write.
This new method had become apparent to me while I was failing in junior college as a young adult. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t concentrate on the objective of getting a higher education.
Not only was the voice ever present at that time, but there was now an unshakeable feeling that I needed to be somewhere else doing something else.
It was an overpowering feeling and I couldn’t shake it. It affected my job and my classes.
This would ultimately lead to quitting a good job and withdrawing from school.
As I mentioned, I ended up going back to work for my dad. It felt safe and allowed me to write in my spare time and pay my bills. For the next ten years, I worked for him, raised my two children and tried desperately to no avail to find work as a writer or get published.
As writing work continued to be elusive and due to my failing hope, I had begun to force the very desire from my being while taking a very serious interest in learning the trade of body work. I knew how to do the work, but nothing about running a business.
It is at this point when I chose the lesser of two evils; to stay at the only job that didn’t give me that horrible feeling that I should be somewhere else doing something else with my life. Looking back on it now, I know it was God giving me a type of sanctuary in which to exist and an environment in which allowed me to be with my children and earn a living while awaiting His timing.
I believe the timing is everything.
It’s not our timing though, it’s God’s. He placed me in the only place where I felt safe because the time to write for a career was not ready. Although I did feel like a failure for not having reached my goal of writing for a living, I began to understand that the acceptance of God’s will is a lesson that all of His children must learn. Without that lesson, true faith can never be attained
It is not only the days of our lives that are numbered by God, but the seconds we experience happiness, sorrow, success, and failure as well. Within each of those seconds, we are learning to laugh with love, cry with hope, succeed with humility and fail with grace.
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