Its taken me about 5 or 6 weeks to get to the point of writing about what has started my need for inspiration. Life has been so comfortable for the past 12 years. My husband has been bringing home over a 1/4 of a million dollars a year for the past few years now. Life has been pretty secure. Where has that money gone? Some to down payments on new cars, nothing extravagant, a Cadillac CTS for him, a Honda CRV for me. A lot has gone to our 6 children, in the form of this and that. Repairs on our 1970's house, no fancy trips or clothing. It just seems to go. Hey, I'm not looking for pity here, it is what it is...life was good. Suddenly we get the word that in August my husband will no longer be employed. Well here we go joining so many others out there. I have felt for those without work, scraping and hoping to make enough money to pay the basic bills and to keep their homes. I have felt so terribly for those who have lost their homes to the sick financial crisis of our banking and country. Whenever I thought about it, I was so grateful for my husbands job, and knew that our security would eventually end. I expected the end a few years from now, not when we have a mortgage of over 3100.00 a month hanging over our head, a condo in Florida with condo dues of 638.00 a month.
The realization that its for no good reason, makes it painful.
I guess its no surprise that the first thing we went into was panic mode. We are going to lose everything, our kids, now grown, will have to move out, and we will hopefully make something on our house and be able to downsize and live. Tossing and turning was an understatement, as sleep was almost impossible. I took Nyquil to get to sleep, it helped somewhat. I am going to do this blog strictly from my standpoint, rather than try and comment on my husbands emotions.
Church was a place I rarely went to anymore. The rosary, I couldn't concentrate on it. Prayer it was brief, when prayer was at all. The side of me that grew up saying a rosary and praying it to fall asleep just seemed to fade away. I blamed it on "life" and what was going on around me. At the end of the day, I enjoyed watching a show in bed, that didn't leave room for my prayer, besides I could never concentrate on it anyway. The occasions I would get to church I would think, I would like to go every Sunday, but hate to go alone. My husband although not much of a church goer, only went with me on Christmas Eve and Easter. I became one of them. I remember thinking, I want to go to church because I want to, not because I need to. I often thought about a day that would come making me need to go to church, and that often worried me.
Coping with the first week of our news was almost unbearable, it felt like death. Didn't matter if we were awake or sleeping it just was miserable to be alive. I even thought about the prophecies of 2012 and if it ended, I would be okay with that. When the sun went down each day, the spirit in me went to a very dark place, and I felt as though I was never going to come back from it.
I had only one place to go from this, into the arms of God. I immediately started saying a novena to St Jude, the patron of hopeless cases, if I didn't feel hopeless at this point, scratch that...I did feel hopeless. I started looking for more prayer. My rosary came back into my life. I looked up the mysteries and put them on my IPAD in a notepad folder. As week 2 approached, I had grabbed on to a few more prayers, a prayer for depression by St Ignasius, a novena to St Claire. I was then introduced to the chaplet of Mercy.
The more I said these prayers, the more peace became me. I shared my novenas with my husband as well. I added a novena to St Therese too. I found myself spending 45 minutes every day in prayer. And everyday became easier. The day arrived where I needed church, and Sundays now started with a visit to God's house.
I began brainstorming our future and what I could contribute. I went to NYC to find blank clothing that I could embellish for resale. I ended up stumbling upon a small store with bargain clothing that was high end. I decided to spend money on his stuff to resale it on Ebay. Once upon a time in the past I did have an Ebay store, more for fun than profit, but at least I knew what to do.
I am about 5 weeks into my Ebay store, and have made 3 trips to NYC for his clothes, and at the end of this day, I have over 100 pcs of clothes and about $600.00 still invested in my start up. That may not sound too bad, considering I spent 900.00 to start and one thing I sold was not apart of my initial investment, but a jacket my husband didn't want, but cost us a few 100 when we purchased it. We sold it for 139.00 on Ebay helping to make my losses not so bad.
I am a fairly handy person, I can sew pretty good and use to do some teaching cross country on certain basics and special techniques offered with my sisters inventions. I exclaimed for years, the things you could do with these products.
I have dusted them off, and set up my sewing room and have even started doing some little things, like tribanas, a three sided bandana as well as embellished vest and jackets.
I am feeling in a rut, but know God has a plan, I understand patience being a virtue, but as the clock ticks closer to August, I must pray for strength each day and pray for inspiration.
Hence the name of my blog...Inspiration Ahead...
God has a plan for me, and I am on his path to finding it out....
I will end it with this...there is a small book called "God Calling", each day God speaks to you on the date it is today...so I opened my book after really feeling like I need inspiration and this is what it read on March 24th
"I am here, Seek not to know the future, Mercifully I veil it from you.
Faith is too priceless a possession to be sacrificed in order to purchase knowledge. But faith itself is based on a knowledge of Me.
So remember that this evening time is not to learn the future, not to receive revelation of the Unseen, but to gain an intimate knowledge of Me which will teach you all things and be the very foundation of your faith.
What of a man walking thru a glorious glade who fretted because ahead there lay a river and he might not be able to cross it, when all the time, that river was spanned by a bridge? And what if that man had a friend who knew the way - had planned it - and assured him that at no part of the journey would any unforeseen contingency arise, and that all was well?
