Nightmares

Day Three

“the story of WITH: A Better Way to Live, Love & Create” by Allen Arnold leads us deeper into Mia’s story. During her life she has experienced many disappointments from her father’s leaving, mother’s rejection, feeling invisible in school, and being unemployed with unpaid bills. With no support through friends or family she struggles with pursuing her chef dreams alone. Nothing is going her way and she believes what the world tells her, “Pursue your dreams and bad things await.”

Since I was eight-years-old I have always wanted to be a writer. God gave me the opportunity to write as a reporter, and later Editor-in-Chief in our high school newspaper “The Journal”. I started at Kent State in the field of journalism and graduated with an English Bachelor’s Degree forty-seven years later.

During those forty-seven years I worked for the Federal Government with the Navy, Veterans Administration, and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Most of those years were with the IRS. As I moved up from file clerk, clerk typist, to secretary, to Tax Auditor, and then IRS Agent my love for the job changed. In the role of clerical I loved the work and the employees I served. Once I became a Tax Auditor and IRS Agent my loved waned. I hated this work. I felt like I was on the wrong side of the table. I wanted to help people not find out what they did wrong on their tax returns and make them pay.

I had to work because my husband was in a trade where layoffs happened often. I became bitter. I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. God knew better however. I ventured into various entrepreneurial ventures to help me escape this agony. But none of them provided enough income so I could quit. Plus I wanted to be a writer not an tax auditor.

When the call for instructors or writing assignments came my hand flew up and I experienced temporary relief from the job. There were many times I cried tears in the work bathroom or called off sick. Loneliness and feeling unloved danced in my mind. I prayed to God to take me from this place. He did not take me from that place.

Through allowing Him to guide me on what He needed me to do while I was there, He gave me a wonderful final IRS position near retirement. I loved it so much I almost did not retire. But the Holy Spirit reminded me my date to leave was April 1, 2011. The picture above is my smile on my last date with the government. The writer dream faded during those years, but never went out. Allen reminds us to escape our nightmares is through bigger dreams not by extinguishing the ones we have .

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These are her four blogs:

• Heart Emissions – weekly spiritual devotionals.
• Juel’s Travel Beacon – travel information and tips.
• Walking For God Challenge – one year blog to raise funds for HOPE worldwide.
• Writer’s Blog – writer’s journey, news and other information

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