A Weight Has Been Lifted

You may have noticed that I've changed my blogger template. There's a good reason for this. The darkness in my life (previously my template was a black background), is going away. A huge weight has been lifted and I'm so happy to share that with you.

Since Christmas, there were only two days where I felt truly happy, and those two days were when my mom and sisters went for a very quick visit to see my niece and her baby. It was my "Great Escape". However, upon returning from that trip, a true sense of heaviness overcame me, and last week was one of the worst weeks of my life emotionally.

As I have been asking God for guidance and direction in this area since the beginning of January (you may recall some troubling posts from back then, although I did not reveal the underlying issue at hand), this week it became evident to Wayne and I that my job was proving to be a major source of my heaviness. Since I have began working where I do, my self-esteem has slowly been diminishing to the point of me second-guessing everything about myself and everything I do. As a result, I was not a very pleasant person to be around. While at work I was able to keep it together; until this week. This week I had two meltdowns at work. After the first one I thought I'd just keep going and didn't really consider leaving the position, even though Wayne and my best friend strongly suggested that I leave. In the words of my best friend she said, "Kimmy, your life is too short to be working in a place that is causing you to feel this way about yourself." I really began to consider what she said, and concluded that yes, she was right. But I went to work for two more days and then had another meltdown. It wasn't a pretty sight.

The heaviness I was experiencing was overcoming every part of me. My feelings of failure in the work place began to overshadow my feelings about myself in general, particularly in the area of being a wife, mother and friend. Honestly, my self-esteem was back to what it was 15 years ago when I was in a very. bad. place. Knowing that I did not wish to return there, Wayne and I decided that for the sake of my mental health, I should resign.

Once I provided my resignation, a sense of relief overtook me. My heart felt lighter and free. My perspective on everything began to change. In one day. All it took was for me to make the final decision to free myself from something in my life that was bringing me down.

I don't want to make my workplace out to be a horrible place. It wasn't. The problem was that I don't believe I was a good fit for the company's goals. My strengths were not amplified, but rather, my weaknesses were. I felt I could never live up to the expectations placed upon me by both myself and my employers. Before I took the job I felt extremely confident in my abilities as an office assistant. But sometime between September 14th, 2007 and February 26, 2008, that confidence was shattered.

While my resignation has now pushed us into a new level of faith-testing with regards to having our needs met, I am confident that God will provide for us in ways I can't even imagine. This may or may not involve me finding another job. Only God knows that. But for the next two weeks anyway, I am taking a break and catching up on everything that has been neglected in my surroundings for the past six months. Honestly, my house was falling apart. And my only goal each day was to ensure that my husband and boys were clean-clothed and fed. If I accomplished that beyond my day at work, I was satisfied. Not happy; but satisfied.

So, there's my big reveal. I know more trials are going to come my way . . . but hopefully I can avoid darkness for a while, anyway.

P.S. Thank you for your prayers and encouraging comments!