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!