More often than not lately, I have been considering all the paths I wished, wanted or desired madly for my life to take or for what I hoped I would be and all the times it has not turned out that way.
I can go back as far as being ten years old. My sister took me to see my first ballet. It was the Chicago Ballet Company performing "Swan Lake." That was it for me. I attended ballets whenever I could, joined the New York City Ballet membership so I could go to the Dress Rehearsal on a Thursday before their opening weekend. For years I was there when the doors opened until I moved to Dallas Texas and they didn't have their own ballet company.
I also started taking classical ballet lessons at 12 and stayed with it until my senior year in High School. I even made it to toe dancing, but if you saw me and my figure which is the same now, though a few (many) more pounds, but same height and build, you would understand I was reaching for a pretty distant moon at that time. Still I dreamed of my days in the New York City Corps de Ballet. I still covet a new pair of toe shoes or the lambs wool to cover my toes - truly I do.
Then there was my deep deep desire to enter a cloistered convent like Saint Therese, "the Little Flower," and spend all my days and nights loving Jesus my most precious Savior. Praying and meditating in His Word, singing praises to Him every three hours daily would have been "heaven" to me. I was to enter September after my senior year of High School. I wanted it so much. I didn't hesitate, even when they said in my interview that once I walked through that heavy steel gate, I would never leave again, even to attend my family funerals. But my mother begged me to go to one year of college before I made such a life changing decision. I honored her wishes and thus lost my place at the convent, since they only have openings when older sisters die. When I had applied, they had an opening, but when I did not come, they gave it to another young girl who also had that desire. I was at a loss but kept on seeking and searching. I became a volunteer for Catholics for Latin America and hoped to be sent there to serve, but that didn't work out either.
I felt the Lord was telling me I would marry and having gone to an all girl high school and college, that was my first time of deciding to date. I was really bad at it. So when I fell madly in love with a handsome man from Texas, I moved to be near him and when he asked me to marry him, I said yes. I look back and have to admit when he broke the engagement that I definitely knew he did not want to marry me at all. But the heart wants what the heart wants and so when he felt so bad about breaking my heart and asked me what he could do to make up for it. I simply said marry me and he did.
We were divorced in less than 4 years and I was a single mom with a darling daughter and have been in serious debt ever since. I never wanted nor was ambitions enough to want a career so I worked and didn't work at whatever jobs I could get or times I could take sabbaticals for the next 40 years of my life. Here I am in my 70's still having to work at whatever I can do or be hired to do at this age just to try to keep the "wolf from the door." I can always hear him though, growling away. Debt can also make me feel like I am literally drowning. In truth, I really am most of the time with bills that wait be paid or overdrafts at the bank because I sent a check thinking the money would stay there long enough for the check to hit. I would say it is embarrasing to ask a grocery clerk to put back all the groceries because your debit card won't work, but when it happens so often, it becomes "hohum what's new?"
I thought about remarriage for a few years but it never happened. I had one proposal that came in the first year of my divorce, which was way too soon to even consider that big a step. No one has ever looked since. I am grateful I never feel alone and in truth because of family and friends I really never am alone unless I seek and desire the solitude time.
I wanted to see the world, and had to give that up because the longing literally caused me pain day dreaming about it all the time. My two main life's goals, desires, dreams or passions that I feel I have never been able to satisfy or truly experience, as I would like, are earning an income with my writing and growing more in love with Jesus and having more time to spend in quiet contemplation with Him.
I think or blame my lack of funds as being the reason I can't make either one happen. I can't afford to go on retreats or to buy a car that would get me to some that I might be able to afford. I can't seem to find markets for the writing I am trying to do so I write but no income is coming.
I am going to continue praying and pondering hoping both will help to make this time of constantly questioning what my life is meant to be with so little time left to do it lead to the answer. I will let you know if I get one.
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