Morpheus

All right, y'all.

My friend Nathan is a graphic designer and, being gifted in all things computer-related, told Scott and me to give him some pictures of us so he could use one of his nifty programs to see what little Bolyard children might look like. I think it's kind of like the program they use for age progression on missing kids and stuff.

Anyway, we sent him pictures, and he morphed us together.

Now, I'm trying to stall so that you have adequate warning about what's coming. It's weird. I can't get used to it myself, and while it hasn't phased my desire to have children, it does make me scream and laugh every time I look at them. Seeing them this large caused quite a ruckus.

And here they are:

I don't know what to say. I don't know which one is weirder, but Scott actually thinks one of them looks pretty good. I think the weirdest thing is that in looking at them, it's hard to tell which features are from which of us. Very strange.

Wouldn't it be weird if kids really were such perfect hybrids of their parents?

The Quest for Peace

"This is what the Lord says - you Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: 'I am the Lord your God, who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go. If only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have been like a river, your righteousness like the waves of the sea.'" (Isaiah 48:17-18)

I messed up yesterday. I should have called the temp agency to let them know I wasn't interested in the job any more and that something else had come along. I should have called them then to tell them that I wouldn't be coming to the job on Monday morning, which they had finally told me was to be my start date. I should have let them know sooner so that they could find someone else. Fearful of their reaction and always the people-pleaser, I didn't want to make the call. I dreaded talking to them and having to back out on something they had found for me. "They're going to hate me. They're going to yell at me and hate me and tell me to never go back there again." That's what I convinced myself of and thereby managed to put off calling them at all.

Promptly at 5:10, though, 10 minutes after their office had closed for the day, I was convicted beyond anything I can describe. I knew I had done something wrong and by that point had no way of fixing it for another 15 hours. I was stuck in my mistake. Attacked from inside myself by a conscience that had been there all along, only ignored for my own selfish reasons. Scott confirmed my error, which - on top of my own conviction that I had irreversibly messed up - made me cry in the middle of Bible study last night and led me to the decision that I really had to do something.

Scott and I worked up a script, and I called them this morning. As I knew deep inside, it was okay - she wasn't pleased but wasn't yelling, either. And now it's done. For better or worse, I'm free of the other job.

That's scary, for sure. Now I'm leaning completely on God. If He wants me to be a recruiter at MCG, it's going to happen. And if He doesn't want that for me, I'm back where I started....with no job and no prospects.....but at least I can feel good about it now. The lesson I've learned is this: trusting my conscience will spare me a lot of stress, anxiety, and tears....and will allow for a lot more peace than when I silence it in favor of temporary ease.

Whether it makes a difference or not.

I'm not sure what I'm doing. I'm so frustrated, and I feel like I'm doing what I need to do to fix it, but at the same time I feel like there is too much about the situation that is completely outside of my control for me to feel like me doing anything will make any sort of difference at all. Does that make sense? Maybe I should be a little more specific.

I need work. I need a job, both for the obvious monetary reasons and the more personal reason that without a reason to get up and going every morning, I probably just won't and will fall into depression again. So I need a job. I want a job, even, which probably sounds funny to those of you in jobs you hate. I want something I'm good at and feel like I make a difference in and have the opportunity to shine in. That's what I want, so I've been looking. I've been doing the networking - telling everyone I see that I need a job and making sure they have no doubts whatsoever about what it is I'm looking for - and even went to the temp agency today. I've been sitting on the idea of MCG for so long now that I'm starting to give up hope on that one - I feel like they want me to work there but are just keeping me on hold (not telling me anything one way or another) until they can use me. Well, while that might be flattering, it doesn't do much for my sense of purpose or our bank account. I have a life I need to live, and I don't want to spend it sitting around waiting on someone else. That's why I went to the temp agency today. It's the same one I went to before that placed me at the job with the golf cart company. I don't know if they'll be able to find anything at all for me, much less anything that I really want to do and feel a calling to do, but it makes me feel better to at least know that someone else is working for me. So anyway........

Last night I had a minor breakdown (i.e. crying fit) about this whole thing. I'm scared. I'm really scared of 1)never finding something I like and am good at, 2)never getting anything and having the brutal truth that I'm not the most marketable employee thrown in my face, and most of all, 3)that I'll be put somewhere I hate and will get sick again. I've been feeling good, and I sure as the world don't want to get back to that place again. That's the scariest thing I can think of right now, and that's why I've kinda been sitting on my thumbs about the job search to begin with. If I don't do anything about finding a job, or passively search for a job, then the chances of getting a job I hate and that makes me feel awful again are remarkably slim. The irony, though, is that by sitting at home and not doing anything about being out in the world of the living, I'm ensuring that I'll feel bad, and am strangely increasing the odds that I will get sick again.

Karla, my counselor, told me that I have a little problem with prescriptive thinking. That basically means that I have this belief that if I'm in a job I hate, I will get sick again. I will crawl back into my hole and never want to leave and will have to increase my medication, etc, etc, etc. She told me I have to realize that while being unhappy at AUM didn't help my mental and emotional state, it wasn't the cause. I have a chemical imbalance that coincided with that, and I need to be aware that those two things happened at the same time......not one because of the other necessarily.

Do you think that God sometimes gives us what we pray for just because we are so insistent that it's what we need, even though He knows it's not going to be what's best for us? What I mean by that is that while I know that God loves me, wants to take care of me, and always has my best interest at heart, I feel like maybe He let me get the position at AUM because I was so sure and so convinced in my prayers that AUM was where I was supposed to be. Is it possible that God - like our parents do when we're little and independent and sure of how we can live our lives - could have said, "Well, that's not what I had in mind for you, but maybe this is a lesson you're going to have to learn for yourself." Could that be? I just don't know what to think about that. Someone proposed that possibility to me a couple of days ago, and I didn't have much of a response to that. Could that be what happened? Or could it be that God knew the messed up chemicals in my brain would mess up at that time and put me somewhere that would allow me to stay home and miraculously still get paid? Or maybe could it be that God wanted me to go there before I even thought of it, simply because He had some lessons for me to learn? Or maybe He wanted it all to happen so that I'd be sitting here today, in this coffee shop, asking these questions.....