Unemployment is hard.  Nothing, absolutely nothing, has gone the way I thought it would.  Things that appear to be a way out turn out to be dead-ends;  potential job leads go nowhere.  It makes me think of a road my husband and I were on in Georgia, on our honeymoon.  We were looking for a certain historic district, because I wanted to see the houses, but our road went on and on, pavement gradually turning to dirt, and the way became more and more narrow, until it finally ended in swampland.  Pretty, with moss hanging from trees all around us, but no houses.

I think I have looked under every rock in Syracuse, and it just is not going to happen.  I stopped looking in my ‘field’ along time ago (truth to tell, I don’t have one) and have been looking for anything that would pay the bills, or at least the rent, as it is now October 2nd and it remains unpaid, as do the utility bills and everything else.  The fact that I don’t like this apartment may not be an issue soon, because without a job, I won’t be here long.  Where I would go matters little to me at this point.

On days like this God seems far away, and I know that I’m moving into a difficult time of the year for me, when the enemy seems to go all out to discourage and destroy any hope.  Dark, swirling, under-currents of fear are already moving around me, making it difficult to sleep, eat, or think, much less see a way out.  October is hard, always, and not being able to go to my counseling appointments makes it harder.  There is nothing I can do about that, except continue to wait, but at least when I had that, life was doable.  In the last couple of years, everything has fallen apart, including me, and trying to figure out how to pick up all of the pieces  and move forward takes more energy than I have.  And that’s without  a job.

The only one who can help, at all, is God.  There is little or no comfort in the Word;  no solace even in prayer.

Is waiting the same as trusting?  I don’t know.

But it’s all I have.