Season of Life - part 2

With some random beautiful farm photos

What a time 2022 turned out to be for me. As I sat down to work on this, I realized that I had not posted a blog since November of 2021. I was feeling hopeful, and had settled much of my fears and my resentment after being fired over the vaccine. I was looking forward to 2022 and what it would hold for me. Though I was expecting more challenges as the new year approached, I felt ready for them. I had God on my side and I felt stronger than I had in a long time. Perhaps stronger than I ever had felt in my life. (continued below)

But despite feeling ready, I found it incredibly difficult to navigate. I found 2022 to be even more difficult than 2021.

I missed my career more than I imagined I would. The environment had become so hateful and so unbearable the two years prior to the mandate that when I was finally fired, I was, in many ways, relieved to no longer be a part of it. But the truth was that I genuinely loved helping people. For thirty years I had been able to make positive changes in people’s lives everyday, and I took real satisfaction in that. Now I was slicing meats and cheeses. And while the lack of responsibilty was welcomed after the difficulties of 2021, it wasn’t exactly earth shattering work. I was also shocked by the way customers in grocery retail behaved towards the employees. They were frankly hateful most of the time and rarely offered a positive expression of gratitude, and were only too eager to let the employees know that there was little that could be done to please them. I had drawn myself into a protective shell during my last few weeks at the hospital in an effort to shield myself from the hatred and indecency of people, and here I found myself reinforcing it. People as a whole simply were not safe.

The next challenge 2022 presented was inflation. Unbelievable and unprecidented increases in the price of fuel and groceries. Suddenly, the drop in income that I had been getting by with, was no longer getting me by. We had significantly reduced our spending when I was fired - down to the bare basics. But now what was considered the basics had to change. We would need to start going without some things. I would find myself calculating my grocery bill and putting some things off a week - or two - or even three weeks because I simply could not afford it.

Despite all the difficulties, I remained positive and found a reason for gratitude every day. I draw on the strength I gained from my closest friend when she was dying. She fought for every day of life after her diagnosis of cancer. She wanted everyday of life because one more day of life, was one more day with the people and things that she loved with her whole heart. She showed me what a true gift life is, and in her honor I am truly grateful for every day that I draw another breath and spend it with the people I love. But while I found gratitude, and chose happiness everyday, that didn’t take away the hardship. Sometimes life is hard. And life was hard. After being forced to give up so much, I was giving up more. (continued below)

I struggled as I faced the prospect of having to find a new livelihood at the age of 56. Before I was fired, knowing that it would be coming, I became an EMT with the idea of becoming a dispatcher for Cal Fire. This would be something that would still allow me to provide a postitive impact on people’s lives. I tested for the dispatcher position and did well enough to be listed for hire. But as the application requests began flooding in, it didn’t feel like it was a good fit for me after all, and I found myself once again looking for something else. Having no other prospects when I was fired, I moved into grocery retail to sustain us, since healthcare offered no prospects for me. But as the months in this job passed, and the more we struggled with finances, it was clear that this was not where I was going to ultimately find happiness and security.

My husband is a land surveyor, and I thought that maybe real estate would be fun, and would also allow us to work together on some level. I am blessed with an amazing husband that I enjoy being around and something that would afford us more time together certainly wouldn’t be a bad thing. I went back to school in January, took my licensing exam in May and started working in June. The first office I began working in was not a good fit and I found myself in a daily struggle trying to decide if this career was going to work. After three months there, I decided to pursue employment with a different broker and eventually found my way over to Cornerstone Properties. This office is filled with the most amazing agents and brokers who are all willing to share what they know and earnestly want everyone to succeed. They have been so encouraging and I have found an environment that I look forward to going to everyday.

Through the end of 2021 and for most of 2022, I was working forty plus hours a week at the store, while attending school and studying for licensing exams. When I finished school and passed the exams, i was still working forty plus hours a week while trying to establish myself in a brokerage and failing, and then re-establishing myself in another; trying to create a business in a giant down turn of the market. All of this kept me away from the things I most enjoy.

The garden was a struggle all year. Late season frosts left us planting the garden a total of four times. That was a first in the twenty-six years we have been here. What little time I could find, I devoted to the garden. But I simply couldn’t give it the time that is required, and along with the strange weather season, the garden was mostly a giant fail. We pulled a few cucumbers and a few other things, but not a single tomato or pumpkin, and barely any squash. I was buried in things to do and found zero time for soaping. But soaping provided at least some income and we certainly needed help there so I felt a need to somehow find time for that too. I also had clients begging for more product, and so many of these clients had sustained me through all of this, and the least I could do was ensure they had the things they wanted until I could find where it was that God was leading me. So in 2022, the two things that I most enjoyed…gardening and soaping… became more of a chore than a pleasure and I was was trying to fit more hours in to a 24 hour day. Frankly I was exhausted. Still….. I found a reason to be grateful everyday, and everyday I chose happiness. (continued below)

In November, I was two months into working at Cornerstone Properties and genuinely finding happiness there. Learning new things everyday in a warm and supportive environment, and managing to find my way out of the shell I had created for myself. Reaching out to make contacts was incredibly difficult at first, but with more exposure, I was finding out that people really were not as unsafe as I had thought. I was meeting so many new people and learning to relax and enjoy their company, allowing me to work through what their needs were, and see how to best help them. Strangely similar to the things I had done in healthcare. I was settling in to this new life, and while the market was awful and there would not be sufficient income to get by for a while, I felt that I had found something new that I could be passionate about. Buying and selling real estate is stressful for people. It is emotional and confusing, and I found myself looking forward to spending time helping people through that process.

I was once again finding joy in life in general. In my effort to create time for real estate, I reduced the hours in the grocery store. I stopped picking up the extra shifts and spent my energies on building a business. The joy I was finding, and the reduction of the hours at the store, allowed me to find some time to rest and rejuvinate, and this in turn sparked a renewed interest in soaping and gardening. I found myself wanting to soap, and wanting to create the intricate designs that had been neglected over the past year. I was wanting to soap for pleasure again, rather than for need. Finding gratitude and chosing happiness was getting easier.

At the end of November, a friend that I had met and become close to over the past 15 months was begining a new job in a new medical practice. We had orignally met when she had reached out to me around the time I began speaking out against the mandates and all of the other things I had been seeing. We were both terribly lost in this storm and struggling to find our way through it. Remembering our first meeting conjures up a image of her gently knocking on a turtle’s shell and softly saying “Hello in there. Can you come out and play?” And me - being an exhausted and fed up little turtle sternly poking my head out of my shell to see who was brave enough to knock. My first thought was, “I don’t need any new friends! The last ones didn’t work out so well.” But I was so wrong! God knew I desperately needed a friend, and He provided one. In November, she left her job at the hospital-owned clinic to join a private-membership health clinic. Over the preceeding several weeks she had encouraged me to consider joining the practice, but I had been resistant; not wanting to make myself vulnerable and expose myself to the uncertainty of healthcare. The two years prior to my firing broke me.

She invited me to look at her clinic a few weeks before it opened. Wanting to support her and her new venture, I jumped at the chance. I was familiar with the people who had opened the clinic through the process of speaking out, and/or through my work in the hospital, and I was incredibly excited about what they had come together to create, and I wanted very much for it to succeed. I walked through the doors of the clinic to see her room and to help her organize and create a workable space and I was transformed. I was amazed by how this clinic was so similar to what I had tried to create on my own at the end of 2021 (something I have not shared with you, because really - if I shared it all - you would be reading a huge novel instead of an already too long blog post). Standing in the reception area of the clinic, I was washed over with a calm and a peace, and had an overwhelming urge to join the practice. I felt God’s presence so strongly, and I had the sense of Him saying, “This is for you. This is where you belong and I will show you the way.”

The soap that I had been making in October and Novemeber for sell in December, paid for the suppies that I needed to open my practice in this clinic. I had purchased the big ticket items the previous year when I was opening a practice of my own that utimately couldn’t be open due to federal policies put in place by the Cares Act. I was seeing the hand of God in everything related to this clinic and I was elated to be part of it,

I had spent a great deal of my time in 2022 at the foot of God. I had lost so much. The last five years have been truly hard and it felt like I just couldn’t get a break. My relationship with God had been a struggle prior to 2021, but by the time I was fired I had a solid relatinship with Him and was confident I was following the path He had chosen for me. He had revealed Himself to me and I knew what I was doing was at His direction. Sometimes God leads you to do hard things. He allows you to lose things. And while you don’t understand the darkness that you are in, there is a bright light ahead, even if you can’t see it.

The owners of the clinic called a meeting early in December to bring together all the contractors that would be joining the practice to allow us to meet one another and share our testimonials. I found myself surrounded by a group of providers that loved God and had allowed Him to lead them to this clinic. They all had stepped outside their boxes and chose the hard road because that was what He had directed them to do. We were all there to do God’s work for His people. These providers share a passion for their patients as I do, and I have never before found myself among so many people that shared a common vision of healthcare. I had found my home - my dream come true. (continued below)

So while 2022 gave me grief (and there is so much more I haven’t covered because it really is a lot, and this isn’t a place where I just want to dump my hardships on you one after another), it didn’t make me weak, it instead gave me great strength. The world threw difficult things at me one right after the other, but I continued to choose gratitude and happiness everyday. I put my trust in God, followed His direction and stood by my principles. When God closes a door for you, He has a reason. He may lead you down a dark and difficult path, but He is by your side and He will hold you up when you can no longer hold yourself up. And when the time is right, when He is ready, He will open another door. In my past life, my faith has waivered. I thought that He had foresaken me. I lost sight of Him on more than one occasion. But I KNOW Him now. And once He reveals Himself to you, that is yours forever and it is the most amazing feeling.

I am not sad to see 2022 behind me, but I am immensely grateful for what it taught me and the strength it provided me. I am closer to God than I have ever been, and my faith can no longer be shaken. With God at my side, I am overjoyed to see what He can do through me in 2023.