It’s after 2am and I should be in bed….. why, I don’t know. I won’t be working tomorrow, so what’s the point in going to bed "tonight"?

Narnia may be beautiful and magical, but it’s still full of the same pain, fear, frustration and uncertainty the "real world" is. The job I thought was going to be my new focus, isn’t working out as I’d hoped. Oh, I still like the job — and they still like me I think. It’s just, well, their non-profit, church organization. They can’t afford to pay me. Forget paying me what I’m worth! They can’t even pay me what I need to earn to survive, even working 40 hours a week.

Today, my boss told me he can only afford to pay me around 30 hours a week, so I better plan on taking tomorrow off.

The problem for me is that this will leave me somewhere around $425/month in the hole. Taking a second job was an option I considered, then rejected. No part time job could pay me what I need… and frankly, taking that second job would take too much time away from the reason I came here in the first place, to plant a church.

So far, I’ve managed to make ends meet by living off my inheritance from mom and dad. I had such high hopes for that money. I wanted to invest it somewhere. Put it away and watch it grow, provide myself a nice little nest egg for my old age. But instead, I’m watching it quickly dwindle.

I know mom and dad would want me to use it this way, but, dang it! I don’t want to use it up this way.

God, I guess, has other ideas… What they are, I don’t know. He hasn’t chosen to share them with me.

How I wish mom and dad were here!! I miss them so very much. Their words of wisdom, their laughter… mom’s comfort, dad’s long hugs…. The both always knew how to make things "all better."  I don’t know how to live without them. Every day I wonder how in the world they lived for so long without their parents.

It’s not something you ever think of asking your mom and dad when their alive. It’s not even something you want to contemplate. I know. I never wanted to contemplate this life either. Even now, I try to find ways of not dealing with it. I watch waaaay to much tv, and eat waaaay too much. If there was another "waaaay too much" that I could figure out how to get away with as a Southern Baptist, believe me, I’d be knee deep in it already! Anything to escape the pain. Anything to not have to acknowledge the grief that consumes me.

I miss them so much my heart feels like it’s exploding and my soul feels inky black. It seems, many days, I still live in that darkness, and just visit the dream life I have here in Nashville. Even after experiencing days of unbelievable fulfillment by just life in general (something I never thought truly existed), I somehow find myself sucked back into the darkness, with the Monster sleeping nearby.  She is a Beast that demands to be fed and pacified, or she’ll turn and devour me. A beast of my own making, through months of running away and hiding from Pain. She is what keeps me from living in Narnia. She keeps pulling me back through the wardrobe doors, back into the past. Perhaps it’s her restless shifting that pulls me back, the same way something in the "real world" pulls us out of our dreams and back into the darkness of our night-filled rooms.

Between the Monster and my own rabid fears of financial ruin… did I mention I’m a drama queen? … poor Aslan is having a struggle getting an audience with me.

…Okay, I’ve finally run out of steam and am starting to fall asleep while typing… I didn’t know a person could do that. I’ve fallen asleep writing before, but typing…?

I will post a follow-up on this later.