I’m in a state of total panic right now regarding my work situation. This is such a long story that I hate to even start typing it. Since I’m pretty sure I’m not publishing this for the public’s boredom, I’ll do it anyway.

Early in February the owner of the company I work(ed) full-time for sent me a cryptic email one evening about a meeting the next morning to introduce a new operations employee. This is strange because I was the only operations person, and there isn’t enough work for two people. So the next morning in our video conference (I work from home) I’m introduced to a very nice man whom is apparently my replacement. This was on a Tuesday and to backtrack a few days, the previous Thursday we had a little company party to celebrate what a wonderful job I was doing, and how great everything was. As little sense as this makes, it made even less sense to me at the time. I was flabbergasted, humiliated… my head was just spinning. Everyone felt pretty much the same way as I did. What it comes down to is that I am now a part-time employee because there are certain things I can do that  the new guy can’t, and they want me to stick around until it is busy enough to go back to full-time. The new guy is a friend/former employee from many years ago who left to start his own business. (A competitor.) Of the 4 other employees who were in the meeting that morning, 2 have quit as a result of the way I was treated. I don’t know why I have stayed. I’m so frustrated with myself for not quitting. Now I realize that I haven’t been paid for the past 3 weeks and I’ve gone into full-blown panic mode. I’m frantically applying for jobs and just generally freaking out about what to do. I have a few other part-time streams of income, but there is no way I can cover everything with those. Every few days, the new guy (my new boss whom I have now trained to do my job) calls me to be sure I’m still on board to work there. I have no idea what is really going on there. I know they are broke, but I can’t work for free. This is just all so crazy. I’m praying my head off just that God would guide me and show me what I’m supposed to do.

Yesterday turned out to be quite an unremarkable day in my garden. I really didn’t get anything done. Hopefully today I will make progress. I had all of these grand ambitions about getting the spring garden up and running over spring break. I would like to say that God had other plans for me, but I have actually been so lazy… I just really don’t think I can use that excuse. The truth is, Wendy had other plans for me. My get up and go, got up and went. Today is a new day.

Today I’m traveling over to the east side to drop Corbin off at my mom’s. She has a new house and she wants us to see it. Sometimes when I think about Channelview, it seems so far away both physically and spiritually; however it is where I was born, and it is where I found a life in, and a love for Jesus. I can’t turn my back on the fact that I owe my gratitude to the place I spent most of my life living. Jesus didn’t try to hide the fact that he was from Nazareth, even when the people were nasty to him there. In this season of Lent, I am trying not to be a person who hides from things anymore. Even though I’m currently a girl in The Woodlands, I will always be Wendy of Channelview.

I’m working on getting back on track in some of my bible studies. Here are some notes from various days I re-read and completed this morning from The Intercessory Life by Maxie Dunnam.

Day 17 The Secret – Remember this prayer: “Wendy, the secret is simply this, Christ in you, yes, Christ in you, bringing with him the hope of all the glorious things to come.” Also remember this quote “In the pursuit of holiness, too often we have a faith that seeks, but not a faith that rests, thus the joyful confidence of abiding in Christ eludes us. Our faith can be transformed by thinking of all that Jesus is and He is for us.”

Day 19 Greater Works Will You Do – “One of the reasons we don’t see more miracles is that we don’t expect more miracles.”

Day 25 We Are the Sent Ones – “We are living Christs here and now. As Jesus represented the Father who sent him, we represent Jesus who sends us.”

Memory passage for this week: Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” (John 20:21-23)

 

So far I haven’t done a great job with this blog portion of Lent. I stopped taking pictures of myself after about day 5. So since this is the first day of the second half of Lent, I’m starting over.

This morning I’m headed out to do some planting in the garden. I finished potting up peppers yesterday. Grow babies grow!

I’m very happy because my neighbor decided to start a garden too! I love that people come to me to ask about gardening. It is fun to look back at all the things we have tried, to see how far we have come with all of this. I hope God keeps helping me make a space in my life for gardening!

I almost forgot to take a picture today!

I’ll have do add more later. It’s already 11 and I have to be up at 3!

It’s true. I said 4 bad words yesterday and 2 today. On the other hand I did manage a water only fast for the first 48 hours. And I haven’t checked my Facebook or twitter outside the allowable parameters. I’m not giving up. God is really working on me. I can feel it. We went out for Valentines dinner tonight at Willie’s so I broke my fast tonight. I’ll start over again tomorrow.

Just. Wow.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/thisisourcity/detroit/gardening-to-make-beauty-out-of-blight.html

Well today is day 1. Here’s the plan:

1. No food for as long as possible. The longest actual water fast I have done was 5 days. I didn’t actually do it, God picked me up by the scruff of the neck and carried me through it. I’ll see how long God wants me to fast this time.

2. No fast food when I do eat. I will still eat at restaurants, just not fast food. I will also try to make better food choices at restaurants.

3. No bad words. This will probably be the hardest because I have a potty mouth.

4. No Facebook. I did this last year and let God fill up all of my extra time. It was so rewarding… I won’t be giving up Twitter but I did go through and in follow a bunch of accounts that didn’t enrich me spiritually. Twitter is like my religion newsfeed for the most part now. I will however be limiting my time on Twitter to before 8am and after 8pm.

5. Exercise. After my fast is over, I will do some sort of exercise each day.

6. Stop hiding. I will be photographed each day of Lent. I tried to find a picture of myself yesterday for something and I haven’t been in any pictures in about 6 months. I think I will regret never being in family pictures someday…

So there it is. I guess I should put in a disclaimer here since I plan to go public with this that these are things that I think God wants for me. Everyone has their own journey. I believe that God had blessed me so abundantly… The very least I can do is let him show me how awesome life is when I’m entirely open to Him.

Here’s how much I love having my picture taken:

I just received the annual renewal notice for this domain. Since I started this blog after Lent last year, this year I resolve to blog my Lenten journey. After Lent I’ll make this blog public. Scary thought… I can do hard things though so…