Something's got to give

Two weeks ago, I hit rock bottom. My finances were so in the red that I considered going without food until it became affordable again. After all, people have survived for many days on just water. Surely, with mental focus, I could too.

As it turned out, the crisis was a shove in the right direction. I became fed up of my finances spiraling ever further downwards and told myself, "That's it! This cannot go on any longer. Something's got to give. I MUST get out of this rut NOW!" So I made an intention that I would drop my professional ambitions and seek work as a cleaner if it would offer immediate employment. Within one day, offers started coming in, all within the same thirty minutes, and ironically none for cleaning.

The outcome of this cowgirl approach to bankruptcy was to take up a full-time management position in the middle of two courses of study. Taking the bull by the horns didn't come without a price. Work was far away from my children, and cost us a total of nearly two extra hours a day we wouldn't see each other, besides the hours the kids spent at school and the hours I spent in class. For a single mother and her kids, this price is rather heavy.

Besides the health risk of staying up till midnight every night to do housework and assignments, the children were not happy. Each day, they would ask, "Mama, are you going to come home at the same time AGAIN today? You only come when we are getting ready for bed!" These words struck a deep chord inside me. I recalled how I felt when I would wait every day till 9pm or later just to have a conversation with my partner, only to find that by 9pm he was so mentally and physically drained that he could hardly be present for me. I realised the same thing was happening with myself. I was coming home and would sit with the children, but I wasn't fully with them.

I wasn't going to let that continue. The kids didn't have their dad. I would not allow myself to be absent too. And so I thought again, "Something's got to give." 

It did give. Not more than three days had passed since I commenced work when I told my employer that I wanted to work only part time from the office because I need to establish my boundaries from the outset, and I am not going to allow my relationship with my children to be compromised. On my deathbed, I doubt I would regret being broke, but I WOULD regret being blind, deaf and dumb to my children while I still had all my senses intact! To my surprise, my employer accepted this and suddenly more opportunities to make money from home opened up. How blessed I feel to have exactly what many parents long to be made available to them.

I ask myself what would have happened if I had been declined. What would I have done if I was fired because of my demands? Well, I had already decided the outcome. When I said, "something's got to give", it was definitely not going to be my relationship with my kids. In a sense, the job had no choice but to comply or get out of the way for one that would! 

Now I know it's not that simple for some people, but what's to say it can't be?  We often trade off what is important to us for the sake of what is convenient or what requires less challenge to ourselves. If you are committed to the life you want, the power of intention is mind-blowing.