Elizabeth, friend! I read carefully every word of your post. I have not had a similar financial experience, but my twenties and early thirties often felt like a living nightmare for other reasons. Sometimes I think that is what those years were for. I am now 51 and can look back on the trials of my younger years and see them as formative...perhaps essential...even, dare I say, a blessing. I live the second part of my life with the security of knowing that at the bottom of the deepest well of despair, God is there to comfort and to guide us back to the Light. I live with the confidence of knowing that I am not in control, because control is only an illusion; in this KNOWing, I can allow my life to unfold before me rather than trying to beat the path to the future into some kind of submission.
The "listening to your gut" advice is something I wish I could go back and explain to my younger self. Not just to heed, but actually to LISTEN--to be quiet and ask God what is troubling me. Often we try to use our busy brains to identify/name our worries, and we are very good at it! We can find all sorts of things to blame. But I have learned that when I pay attention to my worries...even the tiny, niggling, faintly signaling ones...and when I REMEMBER to take my gut worries to God, the solutions are often not answers to the problems I thought I was struggling with. When God is involved in solving my gut worries, the solutions often heal me in ways I wouldn't have expected, and the healing often spills out to others, offering healing to them as well.
Thank you for your raw and honest sharing. I look forward to reading more from you. God's peace be with you this day. -Kris K
Elizabeth, friend! I read carefully every word of your post. I have not had a similar financial experience, but my twenties and early thirties often felt like a living nightmare for other reasons. Sometimes I think that is what those years were for. I am now 51 and can look back on the trials of my younger years and see them as formative...perhaps essential...even, dare I say, a blessing. I live the second part of my life with the security of knowing that at the bottom of the deepest well of despair, God is there to comfort and to guide us back to the Light. I live with the confidence of knowing that I am not in control, because control is only an illusion; in this KNOWing, I can allow my life to unfold before me rather than trying to beat the path to the future into some kind of submission.
The "listening to your gut" advice is something I wish I could go back and explain to my younger self. Not just to heed, but actually to LISTEN--to be quiet and ask God what is troubling me. Often we try to use our busy brains to identify/name our worries, and we are very good at it! We can find all sorts of things to blame. But I have learned that when I pay attention to my worries...even the tiny, niggling, faintly signaling ones...and when I REMEMBER to take my gut worries to God, the solutions are often not answers to the problems I thought I was struggling with. When God is involved in solving my gut worries, the solutions often heal me in ways I wouldn't have expected, and the healing often spills out to others, offering healing to them as well.
Thank you for your raw and honest sharing. I look forward to reading more from you. God's peace be with you this day. -Kris K