Amazing grace

Wow! I've been on and on about trying to get to grad school in Portland for some time now. I'm sure everyone else is tired of hearing me preach about hugging trees and saving the planet.

It's been hard financially since 2006, when I had my last steady income-producing job. Since then, I've gone back to school, completed my bachelor's degrees and optimistically applied for over 1,000..yes, ONE THOUSAND jobs. I moved to Austin, thinking maybe I could find a job there, armed with my 2 degrees and years of experience as a teacher and in a corporate environment. I moved to Galveston after 8 months of job hunting and zero job interviews.

I worked in real estate and enjoyed it until Hurricane Ike blew me out of town, leaving most of my possessions in ruins. I had just taken a job as a barista at Mod Coffee to help pay the bills between commission checks when the hurricane devastated Galveston last year. My apartment was demolished, Mod Coffee was more than 8 feet under water, and suddenly I had more real estate clients than I could handle, but no commissions were paid because apartment managers said my services were redundant.

I already knew that I wanted to go back to school, but didn't know where exactly. But I had it in my heart to try to move to Oregon (even before the storm hit). Then I found the grad education program at Portland State. This was it for me! I knew that it was the one program I had been searching for since 2007.

So I gathered what belongings I could salvage after the storm and moved to Houston, to my brother's home (temporarily, I thought) and I began the job hunt all over again until I could start grad school. Today is the one year anniversary of evacuating the island. In the last year I have applied for hundreds more jobs: temp, seasonal, part-time, full-time, retail, office, you-name-it!

And I began to think that maybe the reason I couldn't get a job was all part of God's plan for making me uncomfortable...making me restless so I wouldn't settle until I had moved to Oregon. I accepted that jobs seemed to elude me and I made the most of my time to write a collection of poetry for children. And I went ahead with plans to go to grad school at Portland State, continuing to apply for jobs and scholarships and grants.

And I prayed for provision. Paying my bills month by month, always wondering where the money would come from, would I have enough? and I've eeked by with the help of family and the grace of God. Somehow, through the generosity of family I have had enough.

But I ran out of money this month. It seems sort of appropriate. There's something so final about it. No money for the phone bill, no money for car insurance, no money for gas or food or an apartment deposit in Portland. No money for school. Student loans will only cover about 2/3 of the bill. No grad scholarships came in, no grants, no graduate assistantships.

I'm just empty and still trying to cling to a dream, a hope for a future. I admit I'm distressed. I've tried to walk by faith that God would provide. I've done everything to look for work. I've tried to be productive with my time. I've prayed and prayed.

And then today, I got a text message from an old friend, who is struggling to survive and to provide for her child...it said, "Pack your bags. We're sending money for gas." Then my sis-in-law offered to pay one of my bills.

And I am truly humbled. How can others continue to give sacrificially to help me achieve my dreams? It seems so selfish of me to be this needy. Poverty is the great humiliator, believe me! But it's even more humbling to know that when I was ready to give up, because I could not see a way out, friends and family picked up my dream, dusted it off, and set me on my way again.

I still don't know exactly how I will get to Portland or where I will stay once I get there or how I will pay for school or how I will even pay for my phone or car insurance, but God knows. And those he calls, he also equips. and I'm clinging tenaciously to that promise! Because my friends are sacrificially clinging to that promise for me too!

Dreams, Oregon or Bust

I had a dream the other night. Ya know, the kind you can't shake and think, "Maybe God is trying to tell me something."

I often invite God to speak to me in my dreams, 'cause I figure that when I'm "conscious" I'm often too busy or preoccupied with my own thoughts to listen. So if necessary, God may speak to me in a dream, 'cause otherwise, I just am too busy to listen.

So I dreamed that I was going to Grad school back in Tulsa at ORU. It was the second day of classes and I was going to be late for my first class on the first floor of the library building. When I arrived at the assigned classroom, there was a sign saying that the classroom had been changed and directing me to the 6th floor of the same building (where ORU's Mission Department was housed). So I took a series of elevators to the 5th floor, got off, ran up the stairs to the classroom, and sat in my seat just as the bell was ringing. Whew!

As I settled into the class, I saw a HUGE grizzly bear out of the corner of my eye. I jumped and looked again. Yep! A gianormous grizzly bear was sitting in the classroom. I started to laugh at the absurdity of it, when I noticed that the bear was staring straight at me. I nudged my neighbors around me and joked that the university's standards for admission had really gone down. They laughed and said, "Uh...you know that bear is staring at you, right? And it looks like he intends to eat you."

I tried to remain focused on the class, but began thinking of ways to escape as soon as the class was over. I knew that bears can travel as fast as 40 miles per hour. No way could I outrun it, and it did seem intent on attacking me. Just as the dismissal bell rang, I saw a rope hanging from a balcony. I slipped my back pack on and made a beeline for the rope, while the bear made a beeline for me. My only thought was, "I've GOT TO MOVE, NOW!" I grabbed the rope, flung myself over the edge and rapelled down to the first floor. When I looked up, the grizzly was towering over the edge, sniffing the air and looking for me, but I ran on to my next class.

When I awoke, I tried to interpret the dream, but all I could come up with was that I must have missed God. After all, I was at the wrong school, the wrong classroom, and the only sign or direction I had was going to the missions department area... It's September already and I still have no money to make the trip to Portland, much less pay for grad school or get an apartment. I don't even have money to buy dogfood for my dog or get gas for my car. And in spite of my multiple efforts to get a job, ANY job, for the past 18-24 months, I've had only 2 job interviews and NO job offers. Not even retail jobs or seasonal work or temp work.

But if I had missed God (which is highly likely), then why did he let me go on thinking that I should move to Oregon and go to grad school there for an entire year? Why not at least let me get a job and support myself for the past year? Now it's too late to get into another grad school this year. PSU's program doesn't start until Sept. 28th. Most other grad schools started classes in August. So I was discouraged and was kicking myself for messing up another year of my life with poor choices...

And then I felt in the back of my mind that I was still missing the point of the dream and that I should talk to my old friend, Ruth Marie about it. I know that she is very intuitive spiritually. I needed to tell her the dream and ask her to help me interpret it, if she was so inclined. I had to wait 3 days to talk to her about it.

And as I began re-telling the dream, I began to see where I had misunderstood or misinterpreted it the first time. Portland State isn't the wrong grad school, ORU isn't the right one for me. I'm in the wrong place NOW. I need to move. If I don't move soon, that financial bear will continue to attack me. I have to get up and get going. I have to escape.

Now, I'm not one to assign too much importance to dreams. After all, sometimes a dream is just a dream, the result of indigestion or some such thing. And sometimes our dreams reveal to us what is deep in our hearts (call it a word from God, if you will). But it's true: I feel that if I don't get out of here soon (though I am EXTREMELY grateful to my family for ALL their love and support and generosity), I will only continue in poverty longer. I have to move! I have to move now!

I don't know how, but then God called Abraham to get up and go to a place he would show him. And Abraham packed up all his stuff and got on the road. And he was rewarded for his faith. He believed and acted on it.

So this week, as I finish up a paint job at my brother's house and try to submit my manuscript to a publisher, I'm going to start packing my car. I have no money to pay my bills. But I'm going to begin packing...it's the only thing I know to do. People will probably think I'm crazy. But then they've always thought of me as eccentric anyway... so I might as well pack up my car and my dog and sell whatever is left in my storage unit (since I can't pay for it anyway) and begin the journey to Oregon. I'm frightened spitless, but I'll bet Abraham was too.