Labor Day Hurdles

It's been a weird day, but I'm choosing to look at it as good because this post is going up and that's something.

For about 3 months, I haven't been able to access my website, the builder (Wix), or really anything related to my domain. I wasn't terribly worried about it until summer slipped through my fingers (again) and I realized the work I needed to have done during those days wasn't. Every time I had tried to remedy the issue prior to now was unsuccessful and frustrating. Today though, I found new resolve to restore what was mine and move forward. (This attitude is from a new, unfamiliar state of being I am trying to settle into, but there will be more on that later.)

So, after a few AI intervention tips, some domain payments, and many deep breaths, I'm BACK.

Not that anyone knows, haha. The one benefit of not having a following/platform.

But I know. And now there is an outlet for when I know I'm supposed to write. God will have to do the rest.

I spent most of today working on my Etsy store (SincerelyCissyStore, shameless plug if anyone sees this) and then regretting spending that time on something that hasn't necessarily proved fruitful. But I enjoyed the creativity and the presented possibility of lucrative return. Either way, I'm still sitting here much too late in the evening with stacks of papers from school still unattended, laundry unfolded, and general 'readiness' for the week wildly undone.

Ironic, on Labor Day, I thought. A day of reprieve we're given as a celebration of work done and I spent it toiling and fretting, at least to some extent. I took a brief nap and am ready to knock out what I need to before tomorrow and the rest of the week.

And I'm honestly excited about it, come what may becuase there's been a shift in my life that I can't entirely explain but I know I don't ever want to go back to the 'old way.'

Today and tonight solidified that.

My last post here was April 11th and I remember it well. I was in the pits of despair and completely hopeless. I was wallowing in circumstances that kept proving themselves far out of my control and I was intensely angry about it. That led to bitterness, then resentment...it had become a vicious cycle that had repeated itself for nearly two years at that point. I didn't know what to do or where to turn, so I did the only thing that was remotely positive in the situation - I wrote. The pain is palpable through my words as they dripped with disdain for how spent I was at the hand of my own life, and definitely at God. It's sincerely a place I never hope to return to.

The shift in my life hasn't been my circumstances - they're nearly exactly the same. Financially, I'm still holding on by a thread, I'm still profoundly alone, and I'm still in a profession I thought for sure God would have moved me out of by now.

Yet I'm different. I know saying something like that is like announcing to the world that your baby slept through the night for the first time - it will likely not happen again for awhile - but this noticeable difference has been around for several weeks now, so I'm going to trust it's here to stay. Or at least I'm going to do the things I can do to make sure the trend continues.

A few weeks ago, I hit a wall. It was a couple of weeks before school officially started and teachers were back in the building for work days, etc. Some things with the building happened that really weren't handled well and it triggered me to the point of a several-days meltdown that I wasn't sure how I'd recover from; i.e., I was plunged back into an all-too-familiar despair a la April 11th.

I was beside myself.

But completely unexpectedly, nearly out of nowhere, God stepped in and reminded me that regardless of these ongoing circumstances that He's in charge.

I always like to say that I loved and was moved by the verse Jeremiah 29:11 before it was cool. Before it was plastered all over Bible covers, bookmarks, and wall hangings, I had claimed that verse as mine after a study in Jeremiah I attended in high school. It's immediate reminder of "I KNOW" from God (not myself, obviously) was no doubt intentional on God's part that it struck me because the number of times I need that reminder is staggering.

But the interesting part of that verse is actually what precedes it. The positive rainbows and butterflies of "'I know the plans I have for you' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you...'" are words actually spoken during a time of great distress. It was written to those that were left after being exiled to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar. I'm not a theologian and don't have time tonight to dive into why they had been exiled, but we can all trust that I'm sure it wasn't because of logical reasoning or fabulous circumstances. The passage Jeremiah 29: 5-15 was presented as the text for my devotional one day amid my pre-school meltdown and chapter 7 knocked me right out of my chair: "Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

?!

I had read this passage plenty of times before, but like God likes to do from time to time, these words leapt right off the page and into my face this time.

While I may not be technically exiled, my circumstances have certainly isolated me and caused a great deal of pain that I would akin to being exiled, along with some other proximal similarities. And this was the reminder I desperately needed at that moment. It was God sitting with me, beside me in the dirt of my circumstances saying, "I KNOW you're not where you want to be or even where I want you to be, but that doesn't mean it can't be good. What you do well does good for everyone around you as well , so go and seek peace and prosperity."

And that truly changed everything.

People at school have noticed a distinct, yet subtle change. My kids are seeing the turnaround. The light has come back in my eyes.

I'm creating, writing, hoping again.

I know there are still challenges and the muck is still very deep at times, but today I faced a hurdle of defeat that formerly would have taken me down. Instead though, I reached for God's hand, reset myself, and am hopefully making some new pathways in my mind that will carry me until when God decides it's time to bring me out of this exile.

Until then , I'm (mostly) content with learning this new way of truly taking it one day at a time with God and focusing on the peace and prosperity I can experience in this very unexpected land of exile.

I hope you had a wonderful Labor Day of 2025.

And please know that if you too are jumping hurdles in life right now, you're not alone.