And so we prepare to move on yet again. As we've looked for a place to call "home", unfortunately, my tendency to speak my mind has cost me not a few friendships. If only I would shut up, I would get along much better.
I started this blog to blog my thoughts as I faced an increasing disconnect with the church, and with society. With every stop, we hope it will be our last, hope that we can find a place where we can just be who we are and find acceptance.
Sadly, in a world where "tolerance" is a catch phrase, we still haven't found it. Last year at this time, I told friends that if this year was like last year, we would find ourselves on the road, we just didn't know where.
Well, the preliminary numbers are in on 2015. And it's sobering. Our household income was 50% of the year before. My contract work was 25% of the year before. And with the older kids working, we have to count their income towards the household income for benefit purposes. So it's either charge them rent, kick them out, or tighten our belt because we don't qualify for certain programs. And honestly, I want my children to build for THEIR future, not mine.
An opportunity opened near OKC in early November. But it closed. But not before we had made the commitment to move. Having been rejected for the professional jobs in our small community, I began applying to the minimum wage jobs. Three places. One outright ignored me, the other never called me back after I spoke with the manager, the third kept claiming they had hired me, they just needed to get me put on the schedule. Then a trip to the store to the other day when the manager was telling someone else in the store that the previous manager was choosing between me and a current employee and chose the current employee.
Yet they never had the guts to tell me I didn't get the job.
And so, we're down the road a spell. Hoping beyond hope we can find a place where we belong for more than a few years.
I've often wondered what drove people to states of hopelessness and homelessness, and now I understand. The ultimate goal of being a social animal is to find a group in which you are truly, genuinely accepted. And unfortunately, the groups I keep finding accept you only conditionally.
But perhaps that's the reason for the journey: to understand.
