I just can’t today.  

I love the kids I nanny for, the ones I was hired to nanny.  Then the other three were brought into the house by social services and I said “yes, I can watch them all (so 6 kids including my daughter, age ranges from 16 months – 11 years) for 1 week.  1 week turned into three.  

I grew to love the older three in all their uniqueness and the different way they have grown up.  BUT, I have not been compensated for watching them.  

The light housecleaning I was asked to do when hired has turned into cleaning up their dinner messes, bathrooms, laundry and being a housekeeper as well as a nanny.  

There is also  a very unhealthy dynamic that involves social services care on more than one level.  The way they talk to each other, to the kids and to me is not okay.  I am constantly triggered and on my defense when I am all of sudden being attacked as a person when really the problem is within the family unit and has nothing to do with me.  

The way they choose to discipline and give consequences (or NOT) makes no sense and is so unhealthy but I have NO VOICE.  Yet the healthy, empathetic choice and consequences based discipline I give is wrong and is causing the 6 year old (completely traumatized from birth) boy to act out.

The level of unappreciation I feel and the fact that I cannot speak up for where I feel as though I am being taken advantage of feels like I am being pushed back to that 9 year old little girl who was told she had something wrong with her but wasn’t allowed, couldn’t speak out and say “NO, NO I DON’T.”  

I feel helpless, defenseless, tired and soul weary.  This was my first job after not working for a year and having the whole “shit year” so I have no savings, no back up and I don’t want to leave these kids behind.  

Today was the breaking point.  I walked into dishes PILED in the sink yet the dishwasher was half empty so they easily could have been loaded.  The counter was a crumb covered nightmare, there was trash everywhere and the floor was just an ant picnic waiting to happen

I want to weep for these children because they know no other way and may never.  I came into this fully believing that this was where God wanted me, I have felt that before though and then have been moved on.  So maybe He leads but doesn’t have us stay.  Maybe He plants but doesn’t have us grow roots.  Maybe that truth that when He leads us to a place it sometimes is only for a brief moment.

I started this post post in anger.  I was mad.  I have been angry for the last couple of weeks.  Yet as I wrote and had to keep taking breaks to get snacks, change a diaper or two, feed the baby and allow myself to pee I was able to step back and see the bigger picture of why I am so angry.

It comes back to expectations.  I have grow to hate that word over the last year.  I had huge ones.  I briefly wrote about them in my last post.  I was a counselor in a detox, I had MY plans to go through school, get my masters in counseling and set myself up in a pretty little private practice where I could just counsel away and save lives.

Ugh…. It sounds so ugly when I say it because I was telling God what I was going to do and I had the expectation that He agreed that it was a mighty fine plan.  Well apparently He did not because for the last year I feel like I have been free floating, with no purpose, no idea of what’s to come or where to go and I HATE it.  I’m scared.  I feel like I am bouncing.  Idea’s of midwifery, moving to Africa, staying a nanny and blowing it all up and fleeing Colorado have all been running amuck in my brain.

All the expectations I had for my life have been blown apart.  I know why.  I can feel why stirring in my soul.  In my core.  As He, the living God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit who drenches me in His life giving renewal.  It never means that letting go of expectations are easy, or okay.  It is painful.  It is all coming at a time where my soul, my heart and my brain (both the literal and the metaphorical) are being cleaned up and healed in various ways.

I am in love with Oswald Chambers and My Utmost for His Highest.  Every single day I am struck to my bones with the knowledge that even as painful as this place I am in is, it is for the single purpose of knowing Jesus.  NOT for being a good worker.  Or a HIGHER purpose.  Or for being a platform, womens ministry speaker (that’s a good story, y’all will get a good laugh out of that one.) It is all for the single purpose of knowing Jesus.

I don’t know if I can settle with the fact that God allows things to happen for “the greater good” I used to believe that very fact, to.my.core.  Romans 8:28 was a verse I stood by. For everything.  Now my faith is being reworked and formed into a beautiful garden of life. I am not sure what that means to me anymore but I do know this…….

He loves me.

He never left me.

He was ALWAYS there.

He HATED it all and wept through every.single,ugly,fucking,bit.OF.IT

He did know, even if He did not/did allow it that I would be here, looking at the bigger picture.  

The bigger scope as I curse under my breath as I sweep the floor for the 5th time in one day, load the 3rd load of dishes, scrub the dinner mess off of the counter.  As I say in my head “Hmmmm I wonder if they look at the dinner mess and say “Oh we can leave it, Bethany will be here in the morning to clean it up.”

If I stay, if I go.  If I pack up and flee.  If I go back to school, if I…….

I am not sure at this point if “those things” really matter.  

He matters, my heart bound up tightly to His matters.

That’s where I have to be right now.  There.  So close to Him that I don’t know where the separation is.

Him.  Me.  Bound.

As Always,

Bethany

Advertisement