For Honesty's Sake. Fuming and Grateful.

Fluctuating between two polar opposite moods all day. Borderline...actually probably not borderline, just plain schizophrenic today.

 We'll go with ticked. There are a lot of descriptive words I could use, that one seems the safest. My normal, "let's talk about this" has been pretty much abandoned and lately leans more in the general direction of "I'd like to kill you." Thankfully, I know most of the things I'd LIKE to say I'd regret later so I've kept them to myself...and by that i mean avoided most of the world today. I cleaned well past two a.m. last night, that didn't help. Today, instead of verbally shredding an innocent bystander, or unsuspecting boy that throws sarcasm my way I usually can dish right back, I decided to work out my feelings. Leg press, lunges, running, dumb bells, squats etc....all with the amount of weight I had worked up to BEFORE taking a three week finals/graduation/sick hiatus...may have been a healthy outlet for my emotions...not so much for my muscles which began screaming at me promptly after...more like during...my work out and have yet to shut up. I called my accountability partner. She pretty much didn't know what to do with me. I don't think she's ever experienced Hannah who is fighting with God and angry at the world yet.

A six hour shift later and I somehow ended up in the middle of the soccer field across the street from my house, at eleven p.m. still in my ironed button down, gryffindor looking tie, and apron from work. I paced for a while. Started telling God exactly how frustrated I was. I moved half way across the country. I decided to go to a school out of my league in a lot of ways. I didn't want to just get a degree. I wanted an education. I didn't want to make grades. I wanted to learn and grow. I didn't want what came easiest. I wanted to be challenged. To fight for something. To give it my all and know that if I failed, I at least went for it. Here I am, four years into my college degree, paid for most of it without loans, worked anywhere from 20-90 hours a week to make it happen, generally juggling more than one job at a time on top of school, maintained a 3.0, took a year off to work and save and go back, applied for a ton of grants and scholarships, promptly received none of the ones I was a shoe in for, and all job opportunities that would financially be my answer have all given me a resounding no, leaving me to continue to wait tables in College Station all summer. COLLEGE STATION as in COLLEGE TOWN AKA business peaks at graduation and then promptly dies and I mean DIES for the next three months. Meaning work twice as much for less.

 Which brings me to tonight. Angry, sore muscles, avoiding my friends who are on the kill list, fuming, marching around an empty soccer field in my server's uniform late at night telling God exactly how frustrated I am. I am at capacity. I can not make school happen. I can't. I can't do more than I am. I can not take a full load of summer school, work full time, pay bills, pay for my cars breaks, buy two plane tickets to weddings I'm supposed to BE in, and save for two semesters of tuition that stand between me and graduation. Which just brings me to paying for a credential which will throw me into a job market that is pretty much dead anyway. Because, you know, God isn't bigger than all of that and in control of it all anyway. AND because clearly all of those things means God owes me. As if I've earned any of His gifts in the first place. Eyes completely on self, zero on gratitude for all He is and has given. Sigh.

 Ticked. Ticked because I watch all the things I have done, and less, work. They work for everyone around me. I've watched my prayers be answered for every one around me. I pray for them and voila. I pray for me and zippo. And my solution of work more just ends up with record breaking shifts of having not a SINGLE table want to sit in my booths. BOOTHS. PEOPLE LOVE BOOTHS. Except, apparently, when my Hannah solution to not having enough money is work more when God is boxing me in. And honestly, that is why I am ticked. Because I know He is making this not work. Because I know if He wasn't making it fail, it would work. I feel like He is manipulating my circumstances to fail. Regardless of how much time, effort, and strength I give it. He is designing it to fail. And you can't really out do God. But not for lack of effort or planning.

 About ten minutes into my soccer field, pacing, rant, I also realized how frustrated I am that I STILL don't trust Him. That the millions of times He has come through for me and taken such good care of me aren't enough for this. That I can't just love Him and trust Him in this too. That I am not at complete ease knowing Dad's got this too and if He is making it fail it's because He has a better way. And that that pill isn't easy for me to swallow. I don't like being taken care of. I don't like people having to help me. I don't like not being able to handle it. And I can't. He has seen to that. And this season is beyond frustrating. It wasn't much longer before I ended up on my knees in the middle of the field, listening to the first cicadas of summer, staring at the same dark sky full of stars God used to tell me He's got this last year.

 Surrender. Submission. It all comes down to that. Do I submit to His hand and dealings. Do I take this yoke. Do I trust the One guiding and leading and shepherding. Do I take what I don't want and don't understand willingly and joyfully because I love the One who hands it to me and I trust His love and care. Trust in the Lord with ALL your heart. Lean not on your own understandings. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths. Sigh. Okay. Oh. Kay.

 Summer 2012...one week in and you are already a force to be reckoned with. But that's the beauty of the breaking, isn't it? It's usually the breaking that reveals what was already broken in the first place. 

PART TWO.

 I've been fluctuating all day between being incredibly ticked and inexpressibly grateful.

 When I'm stressed or angry, I clean. Generally late at night. Last night 1 a.m. found me knee deep in laundry and cleaning out my desk. I came across two things. A picture from camp the summer I turned 15 and newspaper clippings of high school sports box scores and stats I had clipped out of my brothers games. Among them were clippings of Kyle's games too. The boy I met that summer at camp that showed me the power of prayer for the first time personally. The boy that somehow worked his way into my heart and became family against all odds. The boy I've called brother since a year after I met him beginning late one November day on my roof. It's exhausting fighting for someone who doesn't want to be fought for on most days. I've watched light fade in and out of his eyes more times than I can count. A soap opera could not touch this kid's life. I've spent many sleepless nights clocking hours praying prayers for that kid I watched get answered only to have him harden his heart and turn away further. I have a bible sitting on my shelf with pages of high lighted and underlined verses that God has promised me things about him or used to keep me praying when I've stopped.Every August 5th and April 2nd finds me wondering when.

 It'd been months since I heard from him. Not unusual. The last time I did it was the worst news yet. Engaged to an addict I'd disliked for years and hooked on meth himself to the point of blacking out and not breathing, daring death. Last night, looking over camp pictures and box scores, I sent him a text, like I often do, because I know he'll read it if nothing else. I told him I'm still praying. And that I am looking over clippings of his high school games that I've saved along with my brothers because just like I believed in him then, I believe in him now, and just like I fought for him then, I'm still fighting now. And even when he counts himself out, I won't. And until he starts believing it all himself, I'll believe it for him. I told him I loved him and that I'm still praying. Unlike most times, he responded. Not flippantly. Not drug induced. Not non-chalantly. More genuinely and honestly than I've seen him since he was 19. For seven years I have prayed for this boy. There is no justifiable reason why except that God picked me to pray for him and wouldn't leave me alone unless I did. So I did. And seven years later, I am catching glimpses of answered prayers. Or at least beginnings of them. Either way, I'll take it.

P.S. Why can't I go back to last post and bring back THAT Hannah with THAT perspective? Where did she go?