Here on my blog, I’ve shared the spiritual things that I’ve learned while I was on my annual fasts (salad fasts, soup fasts, etc.). That kind of stopped after 2019 (it’s hard to find time to blog when you’re working and in school), but during those times of eating only certain foods and using what I had available to me, I’ve learned how to improvise in practical ways that continue to help me now.
Except for a few years while I was in my mid-to-late 30s and early 40s, I’ve been broke—so, I've basically been poor for most of my life. During that time, I’ve had to make do with whatever I had. When I was broke in Waco while I was in my 20s, I usually only had around $10 to buy two weeks’ worth of groceries. It was awful, but in times like that, you just grab a couple of cans of tuna and a dozen eggs and use them to make all of your lunches and dinners until your next paycheck.
Although I thankfully have more than $10 now for groceries, I still have to be extremely frugal—especially now that food costs have skyrocketed. I’ve learned that homemade soups are still a very economic way to eat during the week (even after a fast ends), I’ve almost perfected my personal style of cooking chili (no matter how hot the weather is), and I’ve learned to grin and bear it when all there is to eat for lunch is a peanut butter and banana sandwich (I’ll eat two sandwiches if needed). There was one week when I didn’t have enough money to buy ingredients to make chili, so I decided to buy a bag of rice instead (so I could eat rice and beans that week). There was another week recently when there would have been exactly $0 in my bank account after everything cleared, so I wrote myself a not-so-subtle reminder on my wallet to not touch my debit card until I got paid.
I have two bachelor degrees now. I didn’t think that I would still be living like a starving artist at this point in my life. I think I’m getting too old for this. This post-graduation season reminds me of what my life was like right after I graduated from Baylor. I didn’t have a car, so I walked to and from two part-time jobs. If I remember correctly, after I would walk to a part-time morning job in downtown Waco, I would walk to my steadier part-time job at the TV station that was on the Baylor campus. (A coworker started giving me rides to the downtown Waco job after a while, and I quit that job shortly before the TV station hired me full time.) That was a crazy time in which I got mistaken for a homeless person, I was learning how to write worship songs on my guitar, and I was still extremely involved in church. And since I was very young and idealistic, I was having fun and was thankful for everything. (But life got even more fun after I got a car.)
Now that I just finished another college degree, I’m finding myself in a similar situation. Two of those three part-time jobs that I worked while I was in school have changed (I felt led to quit one of them, and the other one is my editing business which suddenly dried up after the Spring semester), but my rent has gone up a total of about $400 since January, and I don’t have to tell you how expensive gas has gotten. So, I decided to get another part-time job. And—just like I did right after I graduated from Baylor—now I have two part-time jobs. After I work a five-hour shift at my school job, I drive to my second job to work another five-hour shift. (I’m planning to quit the second job when things get going again during the Fall semester or whenever I find full-time work, whichever comes first.) This new setup is exhausting so far, but at least I get to drive through the part of town where you get to pick your own speed limit.
I wish I could say that I’m having fun and am thankful for everything—like I was when I was a 21-year-old Baylor grad—but now I’m a crotchety 46-year-old lady who’s having a hard time not being bitter. There was one evening in which I sat down and yelled quite angrily at God about my financial situation because frankly, I’m REALLY tired of being poor, especially after working my tail clean off. But it was good that He gave me a chance to puke out my feelings to Him (as He’s always awesome about doing) before they festered into something worse. And I know deep down inside that He’s going to put me in a better job someday—a job that I’ve spent years training to do.
And, of course, it’s not all about the job. There’s a lot of character that I’m sure God wants to continue to develop in me. There’s still a lot of maturity that I think still needs to happen before I can be fully ready for everything that God has for me. I’ll be a seminary student beginning in August, so there’s still some educational, spiritual, and practical/character training to go. And my second part-time job (I work at a call center at a TV ministry) has been basically giving me some extra ministry training.
So, even though I’ve officially finished going back to school so that I can train to be a worship pastor—which, if you’ve followed this blog over the years, you know has been a longtime dream come true—it seems that I’m still undergoing some training of sorts. I don’t want to despise this season of small beginnings (Zechariah 4:10), even though I feel like I’m living through yet another such season all over again, but I want to learn everything I can while I’m here. And I want to be ready to walk through any door that God wants to open for me.
Yes, I’m probably getting too old for this, but I’m doing this thing, anyway. Y’all know I’m a survivor.
