God answers prayer

God always answers prayer....even if it's not the answer you want, or expect.

In my last post I wrote about how I desperately wanted to stay home with Teddy again and that even though I wasn't making hardly any money (turns out I was actually only making $30, not even $60), it wasn't that simple.  Well, things were decided for me.  I'll admit that I've been a bit distracted and conflicted the last few weeks over this.  Also, I am short a co-worker and expected a replacement much earlier.  Basically, I can't do the work of 2 people.  So I've been feeling overwhelmed lately and my work has been suffering a bit because I'm just not enough all by myself.  Monday I made some mistakes and I was pretty upset with myself afterwards and went home and resolved that I'd just have to put my personal feelings entirely aside at work, hammered out a better schedule and googled things about helping with stress and a better workflow.  Tuesday at the end of the day I was sat down.  I knew my performance wasn't the best the last few weeks, I was actually happy someone was going to talk to me about it, perhaps they had ideas on how I could improve.  Instead it seems that for all ten months I've worked there I've made too many mistakes.  No one ever even hinted of that before.  Of course I make mistakes.  Every other job I've had allows for a certain amount of human error.  I'm still not sure if mine were just too high or if they just want perfection.  Like I don't know if 5% of error is acceptable but I was doing 25% or what- I'm not sure if they know or have thought about quantifying it that way either.

Anyway, I was very upset.  But Doug and I got to talk about it and I put in my notice.  If I'm not actually doing a good job then I'm not helping them.  Then the idea of needing to be around because they're short an employee and another is set to begin a temporary leave is silly.  And what's $30 a month?  Dinner out.  It's not like we save $30 a month, mentally it's just difficult to think about it that way.  I'm going to save $40 a month just on not buying disposable diapers for day care now.  I'll save money in groceries and gas.  We're actually going to be coming out ahead.  I know that sounds counter-intuitive but it's not.

I'm a little disapointed that I apparently am a failure at this job.  It's not easy for me to admit that.  I still don't see how, but what do I know.  But mostly, I see this as God answering my prayer, though not at all as I imagined it.  And as a test to see if I can still love myself.  I don't have to take some sort of "Nuh-uh!!" attitude, I can love myself even with my flaws.  I might have reasons or excuses or contributing factors that I could spend all day explaining to me not being great or perfect or apparently even adequate at this job, but none of it matters.  What matters is that this job does not define me, I do not measure my self-worth and life success by my ability to perform at this time in my life at that job.  Of course I want to do things well, but it's alright if it turns out I don't have the right stuff.  I gave it my best and that's not good enough.  I know a place where I'm always good enough....in the arms of my son!!

We'll see how we do on our super tight budget and reevaluate in a few months.  Hopefully it will continue to make sense for me to stay home with him.  And since one of the biggest reasons why we didn't want to have a second yet was because of daycare, then we're one step closer.  There are still other things, like paying for the medical care of the pregnancy and birth.  Hopefully I'd be able to breastfeed again, but after the baby starts solids there's the increase in food and little things will go up as well.  I'd do laundry more frequently etc.  I told you we were on a tight budget!  I think I'm going to start a separate blog about that to inspire myself and keep me on track!