Failing

It can be so easy to want to give up and crawl under a rock and never come back out. I know, I lived there for many years. I can not really pinpoint when I crawled under my rock. I think I did it several times, in every area of my life. I would feel good and come out and try and then get smacked right back down. It didn’t matter what the circumstance but this seemed to happen over and over again. It would always feel like the whole world was against me no matter what I did. Times have not changed much. I still have times where I am run through the wringer and have to keep focused and keep on going. Occasionally I question if it is just me who is getting in my own way or what did I ever do to deserve this? Every once in a while I think that maybe this isn’t the right thing to do. The doubts, the inadequacies, the fears. Life is difficult. When I applied for a substitute teaching position it took over a month before they even looked at my application. They only looked at the application because I went up to the office and asked. Then they informed me they didn’t have my transcripts, I handed them to her right then. If you think the story ends there, it doesn’t. Another 5 weeks goes by before I actually started working. I really felt like I had been forgotten and forsaken, but I wasn’t. If that time had not elapsed I would not have gotten the class that I subbed in. Again the story might have ended there, but it didn’t. It took me a while to take the test so that I could become a teacher. I had fear of failure. The test cost $200, I didn’t want to fail. I finally decided to test and before I could test, I was released from my long term sub position. They hired someone else a week before my test. I felt defeated! If it wasn’t for the fact that I was in dire need of money I would have rolled over and played dead. I had gone through so much already and it just felt like an uphill climb on an ice sheet. I missed my babies (class I subbed in), I was starting to get a cold and just felt like I was the biggest failure ever, because I also had my business failing, bills piling up and my life was falling apart! The next morning I got up went to my new sub job. I was informally interviewed within the first 3 hours of getting there because I liked 5th grade. There were other sources of validation that came over the next couple of days. Getting up on that first day was a nightmare for me, I didn’t sleep well and worried, tossed and turned, but I did it and I got compensated for the losses I was feeling. Within a week I took the test and passed it. After Christmas break I was hired as a full time teacher. It wasn’t easy and there were times that the office politics made things difficult, but I knew that I was there for a reason and Heavenly Father needed me there until I filled that reason. I didn’t go through this alone He lifted me up regularly because I prayed a lot. He turned my failures into success. I also had some awesome people that I worked with that made my time enjoyable when things got really tough and I am grateful for their help. Most important of all was having the Saviors help to make me more than I am and with that there was no failure! Even in the darkest of hours there was still joy to be found.