Let it GO

So this week was hard as any of you who read my 7 QTs knows.

I went out for a job interview at 3pm yesterday and as I sat in the waiting area waiting for the lady to come get me, I kept thinking about how much I hated this. I hate the smell of nursing homes. I do not want to work in one. I don’t want to be doing any of this. I wanted to be sitting in the office at home answering questions about bed bugs, not sitting in this nursing home interviewing for a job that I didn’t want, that wasn’t going to pay me much and that would be the beginning of me becoming my mother; alone and working in a nursing home. Fail.

I didn’t get the job. My certification has expired. I have never been so happy to not get a job. I sat there telling God “If you want me to work here then you say so, but if I don’t get it then I’m taking that to mean you don’t want me to. Keep giving me the silent treatment, I’ll take it as you not caring about me and I’ll make all the decisions based on that.” I was telling my husband the same thing in text messages.

I left there and then went to a local bar to put in an application.  I walked in the bar and I could smell the familiar smell of drunks mixed with cigarettes and pool tables. I know that smell very well. Suddenly I remembered the first time I ever walked into a bar when I was 18 looking for a job. And it made me so angry that here I was again starting over from the beginning, in an effing bar. I love working behind a bar. I love customers, bikers and drunks. I get along with them well and I’m a very good bartender, but I was pissed anyway because I shouldn’t be in a bar at 5pm on a Friday for any other reason than being with my husband. I didn’t get that job either. The manager looked at me like he knew me from somewhere and I had killed his dog or something. I have no idea what his problem was, but he didn’t even introduce himself to me. He just took my application and said he would give me a call. In the bar business that means “Umm, yeah, no.”

As I was leaving a Deacon who has a deliverance ministry that someone told me about, called. We spoke for a few minutes and he told me that I really needed to stop fighting the enemy and instead just enter into the fight praying and praising God. He didn’t think that we needed a deliverance and that made me mad. I had only told him a little bit of what has gone on for the last few years, how could he know that? I mean crazy shit has happened yo.  I hung up with him feeling defeated like nobody is listening to me or hearing me and for sure nobody is doing what I need them to be doing.

I made a U-turn to go to the Parish for confession. I was going to make this big deal about how I WENT to Confession but it was too late so I didn’t get in. Ha! Gotcha God.

I walked into the Sanctuary and the confessional had a red light on. Dangit.

I sat next to the one person still waiting in line and began to examine my conscience. I was so mad. Fuming freakin’ mad.  So I started my list of complaints, not sins.

I walked in and began letting it all hang out. How angry I was, how I hadn’t gone to Mass because what was the point?!, I had put myself in the place of God in my life, wait, WHAT? No, that’s not it. Then I started actually confessing instead of whining.

When I was done Father began talking to me. This priest does not cut me any slack, he just tells it how it is.

“Leticia” he said in his Nigerian accent, “you are not fighting the devil. You are fighting God. God cannot act on your behalf if you don’t let Him by abandoning yourself to Him. You keep on trying to control everything and let me know how that works out for you.”

I was trying to remember why I was so glad to have this guy be our new priest because he just whacked me in the forehead with the truth and I wasn’t too happy about it.

He gave me Psalm 103 as my penance and I went to go sit in the chapel in front of the Tabernacle.  It was dark and quiet in there and the light was hitting the Tabernacle just right. It was the most silence that I’ve had in a very long time. I just sat there sobbing. I just didn’t have any more words. I just needed help to know what to do.

I looked up the Psalm and there was my answer: Praise the Lord, my soul.

Same thing Deacon said.

When I got home I started reading about addiction and co-dependency and I knew that it all made sense. I was trying to control everything and it needed to stop. I can’t make someone else’s choices for them. I can only control my own actions and I can’t control everything. I have to abandon myself to God’s will and know that He’s got me. How many times do I  need this revelation before I get that? This isn’t the first time that God has stepped in to teach me this. And yet, here I am still trying to control everything and take the wheel away from God.

I have to stop fighting God. I need to take the steps that are needed to practically deal with these issues and then I need to do the things that God has put in place to help us in times like these: The Sacraments. He is not a genie in a bottle that I can just ask for wishes from. He is my God who is deserving of all my love. I cried thinking of losing Stacey, but I didn’t cry thinking about not going to Mass, receiving the Eucharist or not seeing Him in Adoration. What does that say? That I’ve been putting a lot of things in front of my relationship with God out of fear of what I’m going to lose. Father also told me that God won’t step in until I’m no longer scared to lose everything. That is that root of my problem. I’m scared to lose ANYTHING. And I’m holding on to it all for dear life.

That is the theme for 2013: LET IT GO.