Trying to Keep My Faith

It’s been a hectic couple of months. I’ll have to say that about the time I’ve been through lately. I keep wanting things to change for the better but somehow, they just keep roller-coasting for the worst.  I have to remain optimistic even in the hard times I suppose, but sometimes I struggle to keep my faith because it’s been tested in the last five months.

It’s taken me five months to finally find a job, I keep telling myself that there was no choice and I had to because if I didn’t the bastards at the unemployment would call me out on why.   I took a city government job that is 100% remote with only going into the office on Monday’s half day.  This Monday I met the newest member of our growing department, he’s a building inspector that is working with our team.   When we met we got along swimmingly, well that’s what our boss said.  We have new employee orientation on the next coming Monday together.  The new guy said in passing about our boss that he thought he seemed like a genuine guy and has a great sense of humor.  Then he added that everyone had to have a sense of humor with what we were all getting paid.  I did a double take and asked him how he knew what everyone was getting paid?  He laughed and he said that if he got short changed with his salary he was only guessing that all of did. 

I nodded my head and told him that I sure as hell did.  Then I decided to do a bit of research and after a few minutes found that all of us new hires are being paid the “entry level minimum” for our positions.  Then I found that Fake Blanche Devereaux is making over $140K, and that may not be much everywhere else in the world but here in El Paso that’s over the median salary for an executive.  Then quite by accident I found out our boss who was working with a huge construction company here out of Dallas was getting paid more than the director.  And now, he’s making only about $5K more than I am!!  This is not exactly the sign I was looking for to reassure me that I need to stop looking for something else that pays a bit closer to what I was making at the university of hell.

Things Just Kept Getting Worse

My dad went in for surgery for a esophageal hernia in mid-February.  He seemed to be making progress but less than four days later he was back in the hospital again because he couldn’t swallow let alone eat.  The surgeon found that since my dad didn’t follow post-surgery instruction of not bending over or forcing himself to cough he somehow caused his diaphragm to swell and causing it to be sucked up into the esophagus causing his not being able to swallow.   So he had a second surgery to undo what he had done when he didn’t follow post-surgery instructions.  I got so mad at him because he was being so fucking stubborn and to add to that he wouldn’t take his medications.  He wouldn’t walk even though he was told he had to because he had deep vein thrombosis.  He’d develop blood clots if he stayed immobile.  So he was released from the hospital a second time only to be back another three days later, then he stayed for the internal medicine doctor to see him and well let’s just say he was being stubborn once again.  Not taking his medications, not doing his physical therapy or wearing his hearing aids and his dentures.  His doctor took him off of his blood thinner because he was severely anemic due to not eating.  The doctor told him he had to eat and my dad rudely said he didn’t like chicken, green beans or spinach.  Which was what the dietician had brought him in the day I was there during lunch.  The doctor then said he had to eat so he could get better and go home and my dad begrudgingly ate his lunch. 

Then the doctor said he was transferring my dad over to a nursing rehab home until my dad could get his strength back and eat well enough to be able to be put back on his blood thinners.  He was transferred over to the rehab nursing home on a Monday night and on Weds morning at 4:16am he passed away from a pulmonary embolism.  My dad was 83 years old.

This has been the worst five months I can recall and as I mentioned before my faith is waning.  I don’t really talk about my spiritual faith because, really its nobody’s business but mine.  But lately I’ve been questioning the Lord and what has been going on in my life the last five months.  It seems that everything has gotten progressively worse.  The preacher at the church I attend talk to me a couple of Sunday’s ago and he put things into perspective for me.   Even then I’m having a hard time with all of this.  But as he said I have to have faith and the God doesn’t test us or put us through all the hard times, the world and the people in it do and it’s up to us and our faith to endure and get past it.  I’m trying right now really hard and I suppose that’s all I can do for now. As Forrest Gump once said…”That’s all I have to say about that.”

Until next time……this is the Huntress, saying…”Don’t be a Moth Around a Dim Yellow Bulb, Be a Moth to a Flame, Make it worth the Burn!”