A Total, Real, Earth-Shattering Spiritual Experience

First of all, may I say that typing on Ben’s laptop beats typing on the iPad, any time, any day?  I felt that my writing on those days was extremely sub-par.  Glad to be back to a normal keyboard.

We had about a week in Chelan to ponder our upcoming life change.  Moving 9 hours away to a new city.  We’re still not sure how we’re going to make it work, with Ben taking such a huge pay cut, but we’ve been poor before.  Heck, we’ve always been poor.  We know how to be poor.  I’m a grump about it, but I have to keep reminding myself, as my sister once changed one of her passwords to, I’m “poorbuthappy.”  I have kids whom I adore.  I have a husband whom I adore.  I’m mainly able to function physically.  My mental state is perfect – which is a big deal.  If my mental side is doing well, I’m good.  I’m good. I feel like we’ll make it.  We’re just hammering out details.

I was washing dishes one day in the kitchen, there in Chelan, pondering my life (I had someone recently tell me that all the mundane household chores that we do as housewives are actually a blessing in disguise, because it gives us time to ponder and be really open to the Spirit.  Or stress  out a ton.  I’ve known women (including myself) that usually do the latter. )

At any rate, throughout this whole process of Ben losing his job, I’ve had a difficult time feeling promptings from the Spirit.  I’ve been praying to accept whatever direction Heavenly Father wants to send us.  I’ve been reading my scriptures.  I’ve tried to find quiet moments where I can really listen for His promptings.  And I really haven’t gotten much.  Which has been frustrating.  It feels like it’s harder to get those promptings now, because our home is so chaotic with the kids constantly fighting and screaming and being generally crazy.  I feel like it was easier when I was single, or when it was just the two of us, to hear the promptings of the Spirit.  I’m the kind of person that needs to step back from the chaos and just be silent for awhile.  In fact, I brought my ear plugs with me on our trip – BEST DECISION EVER.  It shut out the extra noise for me. 

So I’ve been a little frustrated with lack of spiritual direction.  Quite honestly, I think the Spirit has had a hard time reaching me, not only because of my chaotic environment, but because I’ve been just…so upset at this whole situation.  We have to leave the home that we just barely bought.  A beautiful home that fits our family so beautifully.  We have to live on half of what we earned before.  And that will be hard.  We’re literally looking at double-wide trailers now over there.  It’s ridonkulous.  I’ve just been in a general state of pissiness.  Which obviously makes it hard for the Spirit to reach me.

So back to my story.  I’m drying drinking glasses, and I’m thinking about having to go back to work. Because it’s inevitable.  I’ll have to go back to work.  I sighed and thought to myself, “I guess I should get my teaching certificate up to date…” and I felt sad and defeated.  I did love my teaching job.  Mainly.  It was hard.  Those kids sapped everything out of me, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, physically…I came home as a shell of a person.  I went to bed at 8 p.m. every night.  I spent every spare second creating lesson plans and grading papers.  And visualizing that kind of life with four kids now… I really don’t know how I can be a good mother to them when other peoples’ children have sapped the life out of me, you know?  I can’t picture coming home from that and being a caring, loving, energetic mommy to my ninos. I know my mental barriers – things I fear will push me over the edge, and every decision I make is basically decided upon by whether it will push me over the edge.

I think going back to teaching school would do that.

So then I thought briefly about teaching dance.  How, in these past few weeks, when I get home from teaching dance, I’m completely energized and happy.  Patient.  Alive.  I was thinking, as I sat there, drying the dishes, “You know what I really want to do?  Keep teaching dance.”  And I’m not kidding, it was like angels singing Hallelijah and blowing trumpets.  A parting of clouds.  Chills going up and down my arms.  And a clear voice inside my head – not an audible voice, but a voice, nevertheless.  A clear, piercing voice.  And the voice said, clear as day – “You need to teach dance.  This is what I made you for.  This is your destiny.”

I almost started crying right there in the kitchen.  I know it was a Spiritual prompting.  And I’m going to follow it.  I’ll probably make as much as a public school teacher makes anyways.  Haha!  I’ll be teaching (a lifelong passion), and teaching something that is a huge part of me.  I’ll be dancing for a living!!  A dream come true!

Can I tell you something cute?  I was teaching my little 7,8,9  year old girls today, and after class, I had three girls give me huge hugs.  Cutest thing EVER.  And I had a mom ask if I could give private lessons to her daughter every week to help her with her jazz pirouettes, fouettes, and turns in a la seconde.  I checked with the lady in charge and arranged it.  So I start that next week.  It will be fun, helping someone one-on-one.

As to when we’re joining Ben in Bend, no idea.  I’m kind of waiting for him to figure out what he’s doing.  I think he should just go ahead and find us a rental house and get all settled in while I tie up loose ends here, and then we can go join him.  Besides, the house will sell much better if we’re not here in it.  Because my kids are complete and total SLOBS.  He’s like, “Maybe I should find a room for rent.”  And I’m like, “For a month?”  I want the kids there to start school at their new school.  I don’t want to rip them out of their school after only a month or two here, you know?

Ben and I (okay, it was just Ben) used a roto-tiller to till the dead grass in the backyard today.  It took Ben two hours.  I pruned trees so he could get under and around them.  I’m in charge of raking the dang thing while Ben starts painting the house.  Ooooh, wait until you see what colors we’re painting it.  It will look so much better!  And hopefully sell well.  I think I should try to find some area rugs to jazz up our rooms and also cover up the fact that these floors show every speck of dust.  We should have gone with the lighter color so that dirt and grime could be hidden more easily.  Ah well.  You live and learn.  So we have lots to do.

I got my biopsy today.  I’m so tired right now that my eyes are rolling into the back of my head, so I’ll type all of that tomorrow.  Oh, and this will take a few days to upload, because Ben accidentally tore up the internet line when he rototilled.  It was buried only a few inches of topsoil he tilled!  I don’t know what kind of idiot buries an internet cable in the first few inches of topsoil, but whatever.  Bad on whomever did that before.  Ben says he can fix it.  So until then, no internet.