365 Days of Gratefulness ~ Day 4

Today I am grateful for my part-time job.

I have only ever had 2 other jobs.  When I was in high school I worked at a fast food restaurant.  A few months after graduation, I began working at a Long Term Care facility in medical records.  The plan was to only be there until I graduated college, but I ended up working there for 17 years.  It was there, in my office, that I collapsed when I first got sick.  I left in an ambulance and never returned there to work again.  It's been hard.  Very hard.  It will be 4 years next week when that happened, and I still cry about it times.  It took me 3 months to go through the bag of stuff that was packed up from my desk.  I finally just took the pictures out of my girls and the bible I kept at my desk, and threw the rest away.  I didn't want to look at it, much less keep it as a reminder of what I had lost.  It took my awhile to understand why it's been so hard.  Partly because of the way my dismal, which is just a pretty way of saying I was fired, was handled.  I felt like I had been thrown away and it hurt.  I now know there is no way I could have ever gone back to work there.  Physically I just can't do it.  I don't miss the job.  Don't get my wrong, I liked my job.  However, it could be stressful and frustrating.  What I miss are the friendships I had.  I spent more time with the people I worked with than I did my own family during the week.  I had developed some very close friendship with some of them.  Friendships I believed were for a lifetime.  It's been heartbreaking trying to understand why those relationships ended when I lost my job.  I would ask myself if I just didn't matter to them as much as they mattered to me.  Actually, some days I still ask myself that.  To be fair, a couple of them were dealing with some heavy stuff in their own lives, and their time was consumed with those things.  I knew this and I understood.  It was still hard though.  I miss them greatly.  I know that some friendships are only for a season and few are for a lifetime.  I also know that just because I don't hear from them very often doesn't mean I've completely lost their friendship.  It just simply means life has changed.  And it's changed a lot.  I'm not very fond of change.

I also felt useless after I lost my job.  I had always worked and I wasn't sure what to do when suddenly I didn't have a job anymore.  There were many days it took everything I had to just get through the day.  I had to relearn how to do everything from how to walk again to learning how to hold a pen.  My muscles were so weak and none of them seem to work like they should.  As I regained some of my strength, I desperately wanted to go back to work.  It still wasn't possible though.  Just taking a shower wears me out, so there was no way I could work even half a day.

Then one day, the perfect opportunity was laid in my lap.  Darryl asked if I would be willing to help when he started his new endeavor.  Of course I said I would, but quickly after saying yes, I realized he meant something other than I thought.  I thought he was asking for my help as a favor as a friend, but he was offering me a job.  I was very hesitant.  I've seen so many friendship end over business.  It just wasn't worth it to me to risk that happening.  My friendship with Darryl and Mary is far more important to me.  We spent the next few weeks discussing it and praying about it, and I ended up agreeing to give it try.  I am so grateful I did.  It's been such a huge blessing.  

I only work part-time, and I work when I feel up to it.  I don't have to take a shower or even get dressed.  I can work at 5 a.m. or 9 p.m.  I can work from my dining room table, the couch or even sitting on the bed.  He will tell me what is a priority, and I do it as I can.  I don't work every day and some days I don't work more than a couple of hours.  I can work for 15 minutes and then rest for 2 hours before starting again.  It's also given me a purpose, and I feel like I'm contributing to my family ... and the added bonus of being able to help a friend.

So on day 4, I am grateful for the blessing of my part-time job.  I was beginning to believe there was no way I would ever be able to work again.  I am grateful the Lord showed me otherwise and laid the opportunity in my lap.