Out with the old, in with the new

Repainting the walls of my soul.

Today I started my day in slippers.

I'm a week late here on this catch up series y'all, but this is a totally normal thing for me. I am late to everything, I'm late to life, and I'll be late to my own funeral which just means I'll die later...

So there I was jobless, and waking up from a couch nap, it was like there was a wrecking ball crashing around in my brain. I wanted to scream from the rooftop how happy I was to not be working for a company that degraded me and made me feel small, un-appreciated and replaceable. While on the other hand I had just been fired, no warning no reasoning just dropped. The fear of financial worries loomed over me as it was literally two months to the day until our wedding. What will people think, fired, it's almost a four-letter F word, right? How was I going to get a job when I had to tell them I was fired from my last one. That evening my husband called me from his Vegas bachelor party and I couldn't hold it in. I did not want to ruin his trip, stress him out, or sabotage his fun, but I just couldn't lie it doesn't fit me. It's like trying to put a cat in a sweater. Okay people really do that, but the cat just looks miserable and pissed off about the whole situation. I blurt out in the middle of him telling me about his day at the pool floating around in the lazy river, "Well I got fired today". I'm sure he was shocked, he asked why, and I told him to the best of my ability what I knew. He said, "honey you didn't do anything wrong and this is going to be good for you now you can focus on school". The rest of our conversation is kind of a blur I remember him saying "well I guess I'll be making the guys buy me drinks, so I don't spend money, it's a good thing I'm sick cause I'm not really feeling like partying to hard". I told him it would all be okay, and I knew that God was doing something here. I remember begging him to try not to worry and to just have fun. I told him God would provide for our needs as he always does and that he closed a door so he would soon have to open a window.

The next three days without him home seamed to just drag by. At one point I couldn't hold it together I dropped to me knees in the middle of the living room tumbling my water bottle to fizz on the ground next to me, and I sobbed, like ugly cry status. I kept saying over and over I get it God you are in control. The next day while descending the stairs to get my shower coffee. Yes, shower coffee, I sit on the floor of the shower and drink my coffee because I am not a morning person, I rebel against being woken, no matter what time of day it is. On my way down, I lost my footing in the carpet and just like cartoon, where one character gets a rug pulled from under them, I was feet in the air, straight to my lower back, whip lashed the back of my head on the stairs above and behind me. I lay there for moment looking at the ceiling thinking what the heck was that all about. I still didn't get it, here I was rushing around trying to do something, and God was like nope. So, there I was in my skivvies wounded on the stairs. I was not slowing down, I was not processing what was going on. When I picked my husband up at the airport I got those butterflies us people in love always talk about, I still get them when he shows up somewhere unexpected. The feeling of his embrace soothed every static nerve in my body. He is my serenity on this earth, he keeps me grounded and leads me just the way God intended and man to lead a woman. He still loved me even though I had failed us. I spent the next month trying to rebound my classes. At this point I had failed a midterm and missed so much in one of my classes that there was no way I could pass. I had to concede failing again. Failing another class, but I was able to pull my other grade out of the gutter and I actually got a B+. That wasn't good enough for the school though. After three terms straight, of failing at least one class a term I received an email letting me know I was academically suspended. I knew this was coming and already had an appointment with my adviser to find out what I could do to be reinstated. I did not know however that they would pull me from all my summer and fall classes which I had already registered for. My adviser told me to take the summer off talk to student health and counseling and then come back fresh in the fall ready to move forward. That was the plan, and that's what I did. I had picked out all sorts of cute decorations on Pinterest for our wedding so I decided to pour myself into that. I don't do idle hands well at all, I really do better busy so all this nothing to do was making me feel out of sorts. No school, no job, no direction except forward I guess. At the time my husband was playing in a co-ed indoor soccer league, so now that I was not working on Sunday they asked me to play. The very first game, I rolled my ankle in the seam of the turf and broke my right ankle for the third time in my life now. This was the day before I was to leave on a trip with my bestie for her birthday. So, I hobbled my way through our great fun trip starting with the tulip festival and ending with whiskey, masks, high dose anti-inflammatories, and an ice pack in our Air bnb bed, giggling until we fell asleep. I needed that trip just as much as she did. On our drive home, I told her that God broke my ankle! She was like "what are you talking about silly girl, that's not even a thing". I told her that he kept trying to get me to slow down and just be. Anyone who knows me knows that this is a very difficult concept for me, heck I know that this is difficult for me. I like to go go go, do do do, live live live. If I hold still I fall asleep. I remember my husband telling me to just relax and have fun with the decorations. "Don't worry about school, work, don't worry about finding your next thing. You gave your heart, soul, time, sweat and tears to that blasted place, you deserve a break so just chill and take it." My husband is a smart man, cause boy oh boy did I bite off more that I could have ever possibly finished with my decoration desires for the wedding, had I been working and taking classes. We spent hours breaking down pallets and I spent even more re-building them and then countless more painting them. I remember thanking God and crying many times throughout this whole process. Because if I was still working and going to school there is no way I would have ever had the time to make the decorations for the most important day on our lives. I am very proud of them. So today I am thankful for God's timing, and his ability to physically break me just so that he could rebuild and refine me. I learned to repaint my speed in house slippers...