Summertime draws to an end... back to work and reality

I am employed by an academic preschool. And as such, for the past twenty-five years, they have had the program estabilshed so that after the promotion ceremony in June, the majority of Pre-K students no longer attend the school. This creates an issue for the employees. There is not enough enrollment for the Pre-K teachers to all have 40 hours per week- and as we found out, barely even 20 hours per person per week. I feared for my job and my livelihood. I wasn't sure how I was going to be able to pay rent and buy food. I thought I would be living off of Top Ramen and Kool-Aid for the summer. It is so mind-blowing how much grace and mercy God has shown me with this summer and the predicament I thought I would be in. It started with moving in with a couple where they blessed me with only having to pay $300 the first two months I lived here (so last month, and this month). Then I had an unexpected $521 check given to me by The Master's College; a credit balance that I had at the school that they needed to deal with, and I couldn't have planned the timing better if I'd tried. I also was able to pick up some extra hours at work throughout the summer from people who didn't want their hours, or who I was able to trade hours with, resulting in getting a lot more hours than I was supposed to get. I know it was the hand of God pulling me through. I look at this summer and how incredibly blessed I am, and I know my response should be to be blessing others with the blessing I have received. I feel like I have done some things for others that hopefully have blessed them as I so incredibly have been blessed. There's so much more that I wish I had done. I want to get back in the practice of sending people cards. Just cards to say hi, that I love them and that I am thinking about them. I realized how few of my friends' addresses I have. We communicate so much through the internet, that snail mail is becoming more and more obsolete, and more and more precious. I have gotten one piece of mail since living in my new place, and while I was grateful for it, it was something that I had left at my mom's house while I was visiting, and she was returning it to me, and it was the only thing in the bubble-mailer. No note, nothing. I know, this is really selfish and pathetic of me, but I was hoping for a little note that said hi. Shoot, it could've been written on a receipt or a gum wrapper for all I cared, it could've just said "hi jess!" or "love you"...but it was only the item. I almost didn't even want the item, it threw me so aback that it was the only thing in the overpriced mailer. This experience, along with always having the desire to do nice things for people, to put a smile on someone's face, is what will hopefully spur me on to send my mom and a bunch of my friends little notes. Simple cards that say hi and I love you, I miss you and I'm thinking about you.
I hope that I can keep up with that task as well as the blogging task.
I write all of this because my summer of decreased hours, and lots of free time, has drawn to an end. I have to get up at 6:45am tomorrow to make it to work by 8am for a NINE HOUR DAY. I haven't worked that many hours in a single day since the first week in June. I mean, crap, last week, over a period of three days, I only worked 10.80 hours!!! Not to mention the fact that I haven't gone to bed before midnight since about the beginning of June also! I don't think I will be able to do it. It doesn't help that I took a pretty long nap this afternoon and I'm not tired at all right now. So, I have a bunch of things working against me here, but I just wanted to reflect on the amazing and fun summer I've had. It's back to reality now. Back to school. I always enjoyed starting fresh every fall. Now that I'm an adult, I get to still have the experience in my vocation. This summer was the last summer that the diminished Kindercamp program at Sunshine will be happening. (Supposedly). They are switching the program so that it is year-round, like the Preschool's program; August to August. I don't know how that will work academics-wise... i guess we shall see!

Another thing came to mind just now, as I was blogging about God's perfect timing, is the timing he has given me in my life in general. I went for six years after high school without dating any guys what-so-ever. Recently, I was set-up on a blind date with the brother-in-law of my regional director. We'll just put it nicely and say that there just wasn't any connection between us. He didn't seem like he cared one bit about getting to know me, I didn't feel like I could carry on any conversation, let alone an intelligent one, and he was ten years older than me, which means when he was 18, I was 8. He was a very nice mentally challenged man, and I guess I should be grateful for somebody taking the time to set me up, and then for the guy to take me for frozen yogurt and black-light mini-golf, but umm, did I mention he was special like special ed? Yeah, it was almost insulting, definitely a bit humiliating that my regional director thought that I would click with his handicapped brother. And no, everyone, he was not just nervous, he was a nervous mentally challenged man. And he was too old for me. I need someone born in the same decade as me, if possible. Which is 5 years. He could be 29, at the oldest. I don't want to be with someone who will be going through a mid-life crisis either at the beginning of dating him, or within the first year of dating him. I really don't feel like I'm requiring too much here, but seeing as the only guy I've been set up with was nobody I had ever fathomed of being with for any amount of time was disadvantaged, maybe I am. I felt like I was being taken advantage of for my niceness and my lack of being able to turn people down when they ask me to do things. This is where I put my foot down. I will not continue to date Special Ed guy, because with my luck, it will continue to be a series of dates that I can't say no to, and he will wind up asking me to marry him or something. Of course, I would be able to say no to that, but I believe that dating should be more of a courting process. That you are getting to a know a person more intimately because you are interested in someday getting married to them. I don't feel like I'm being a prude by not calling him back (which by the way in 3 weeks, he's only called twice) because I feel like I would be leading the guy on that I am interested. I do face the challenge of being in a predicament tomorrow when I see my regional director and he asks how my date with his brother-in-law went, and why I haven't contacted him back since the date when he has called me... in this case, the truth could get me fired, or at least put on a Butt list with him, so I will sugar-coat it!! I plan on saying that I didn't feel any connection, I wasn't able to carry on a conversation with him easily, he is much older than me (I guess I will admit to having looked him up on the internet's White Pages because I knew NOTHING about him before meeting him on our blind date, and I wanted to make sure he wasn't on America's Most Wanted or something) but it may not even come up. I'll have to keep anyone who reads this posted.
But about the timing thing, people always say that when you least expect love, it happens. Well, how do I stop expecting or hoping for it? Is there some secret to turning off the section in my brain that wants so desperately to find someone to share my life with? I'm not asking for a prince charming here. Sure, I have some high standards, but I have fairly low expectations! You'd think that I'd be able to find SOMEONE to spend this short amount of lonely time here on this planet learning from and learning with and growing with!! I have things happen that I realize were perfect timing, but then, when it comes to a relationship, I look around me and see so many people getting married and having babies, it is SOOO hard to remember that God has it under control. That He has a different, more testing plan for me. Things don't fall into my lap like they do for so many. And also, I don't have the worst situation ever with my life either. I am content being single. I don't talk about finding someone hardly ever... it just seems to come up a lot when I blog... I have a great life with a great job working with kids and co-workers that I love and have a lot of fun with. It's really only after everyone has gone to bed with their sweethearts, and I turn to my stuffed Build-a-Bear, that I wish for something more than fluff and stuff. It's only when at a wedding, everyone my age will have someone to sit with, and to dance with, that I wonder if it will ever be my time to experience what the emotions and deep connection to a person are like. I don't feel cursed, just restrained. I cling to hope everyday that I too, could experience the thing that people think will never happen for them, true love. I just pray that I have faith in the promise that God knows what He is doing. That I will live joyfully each day for what I have been given. That all the things that I regret doing in my life, I learn from. And that in everything I do, I give all the glory to God. My precious Savior and King who if not for His incredible love for me and for humankind, I would be nothing, have nothing, and hope for nothing.