As some of you have already heard, someone took my money pouch on Saturday with all my session fees for Easter Minis. I was devastated. I can't tell you how tired I was and how hard I worked to get all that together. In my mind, God was punishing me. I was spending too much time doing things like that and not enough time with my kids. I wasn't a good enough mom. I worried too much about money and some upcoming expenses we had coming up. I didn't trust Him enough to take care of us, so this was His way of saying I should be better at trusting Him.
All through the night Saturday, I woke up with panic attacks. My poor husband finally about shook me and said, "You have to let this go!" I think the poor guy just needed sleep. I punched a few walls, screamed on my knees at the ceiling, kicked one of my Easter totes, and bawled like a baby. I felt like my insides were turning inside out.
I have questioned God about a thousand times. I know some of you are thinking, "It was just money." It was just money, but to me, it was more than that. It was about working toward a goal I had set in my mind. It was about trying to keep to our debt free goal. It was about contributing to the family and helping keep us on track. It was about security.
For those of you who know me fairly well, I am a pretty self-confident person. When it comes to being me and who I am as a person, I am confident in that. I have been for quite some time. I don't care if you don't like how I dress or that I speak my mind. However, when it comes to stability in my life and consistency, I kind of fall apart. For instance, for years I stressed over Christmas. Putting things on a credit card and having enough to purchase what we needed drove me crazy. I love Christmas and it is important to me. Anthony and I came up with a plan that each year we would take some of our tax return and create a Christmas account. That way, I could purchase all through the year when the prices were good and I could always know how much was left in the budget. Christmas was safe.
I am also kind of a crazy scrooge when it comes to money as well. Letting go of money to purchase things--even if we need it--is hard for me. (You should be a fly on the wall in some of our family discussions.) Well, I take that back. If it's for the kids it's not as difficult. As many of you saw, we visited Disney for five days earlier in the month. I literally saved from 2011 until this year for us to go on that trip. At the time, I was also saving to build myself a storage closet for props, new equipment and more. The Disney saving usually took a backseat to things we needed more, hence why it took me so long. In my mind, I even wondered if God was punishing me for wasting money on that trip. Maybe He thought I could have put it to better use?
Once I came to grips with losing the money, I realized something else had happened the day it went missing. On Sunday, I had a regularly planned session with a wonderful family with whom I have shot several times. I know them and am completely at ease with them. We had planned to meet in a parking lot of a restaurant. While I was waiting on them, I felt anxious. I felt like I needed to be aware of my surroundings. And by all means, I needed to keep my windows up and my doors locked. As most of you know Sunday was beautiful and I was pretty sweaty in the car with the windows up. The same feeling started to surface on Tuesday when I went to shoot a set of school portraits for a local preschool. There were workers milling around working on the buildings and I found myself constantly looking over at my car where I had strategically hid my purse under the 5,000 jackets that I found in the floorboard.
I felt scared. I felt panicky. Even though in both situations I knew I was going to be in the presence of people I felt comfortable with, I felt uneasy.
About seven months ago, I had my car broken into. I felt violated and angry. I felt the same uneasiness and anxiety that I feel now. It took me months to get comfortable. I don't want it to be like that again. I hate being scared and uneasy. My anxiety already causes a good bit of that anyhow, but having to deal with events that push it to the limits, it makes me very tired.
The hits kept on coming this weekend. After getting hardly any sleep and feeling like I had been hit by a truck, on Sunday I wake up to the sound of someone vomiting in the floor. Poor Jase stood there outside my bedroom door with his little puke puddle. I have to admit, I looked at the ceiling and said out loud, "Do you hate me? Am I really that bad of a person?" Luckily, we came to realize that it was most likely drainage from his allergies which the poor kid has been fighting for weeks now it seems. However, I still felt like I couldn't catch a break.
Monday, my dog walks into my office and pees on the rug. Tuesday, I didn't bring something I needed to a session. Today, I realized I emailed someone the wrong thing and my computer starts acting like it's on the blink. I have to admit, through all this, I kept asking God what it was that I had done that had offended Him so much that I needed to suffer through all this.
As I sit here tonight writing all of this, I am reading one of my Dad's texts to me from Monday.
".....I can say without reservation GOD does love YOU and has blessed you bountifully. God did not cause this but allowed it. What you have to focus on is what is he teaching me as an individual, as a parent, as a friend. There will be more to come. Navigate through this. Learn what you can, that way you can be a better help to someone else because of it."Ouch. So yes, apparently I need to put my big girl panties on and learn from what I am going through. In the end, if it helps me help someone else one day, shouldn't I be okay with that? I have always thought my parents were wise, but this one really hit home for me. I have been so focused on God punishing me that I hadn't focused on what blessings I had! Suddenly, that plaque that my grandma has hanging in her bathroom about the footsteps in the sand really made sense. This weekend, God was carrying me because I wasn't walking along in my own strength. My strength was gone.
You might be thinking like I was at first--What do I really have to be thankful for right now? To be honest, I wasn't grateful for one stinking thing when I lost it over realizing the bag was gone. But after getting that text, I have tried to put things in perspective and be grateful. In both situations where I have lost something, I have never been personally attacked. I haven't be forced at gunpoint to give up something. No one has physically harmed me. In both situations, not one piece of my camera equipment was touched. (Apparently, God thinks I should keep doing this as a job.) I still have a way to continue providing for my family with that in my possession. None of my clients were harmed and the sweet goats were just fine. My master schedule which has every date I have booked logged, was recovered from the grass. (It was attached to my money bag.) I could have had to dig through hundreds of emails and messages to recover all of that information--talk about time consuming. As I have sat down to count my blessings, the list gets a little longer.
So am I still angry and questioning God? Still asking questions, yes, but angry, no. To be honest, if I am being punished by anybody, it's probably Satan and his buddies. Anthony and I have been really trying to use this blog and our videos on Friday nights to encourage others and lift the spirits of our friends and family. I have found that when you are doing something positive, that's generally when things gets tough. Satan doesn't want us to continue to be an encouragement. And if that's true, what's the best way to shut us up? Hand out some really crappy times and situations. Maybe that's why God allowed all of this to happen. Maybe that's the lesson I needed to learn. It could be that my dad is right and that there are people out there who need to hear that I have been struggling with these events and that I am fighting to get over it. And I will get over it with the help of a loving heavenly Father.
Before I close, I do want to say thank you to every person who has called to say something kind, stopped by to give me a hug, emailed a word of encouragement, or who has offered to help in any way. I know I say this a lot, but I have some of the best clients in the whole entire world. You guys are more than clients--you are my friends. You have shown me that you care about my mental health and my family. Each of your families are blessings I counted when I sat down to reevaluate my situation. If I ever get the opportunity to do the same for you, you better believe I will.
