character versus comfort

It’s almost four am here in Lynchburg.

I laid my head down at 12:30, then I fell into that weird in-between stage between being asleep and awake. That place is the worst.

I tossed and turned and tossed and turned. I tried fluffing my pillows and putting my down comforter in between my legs to keep my knees from knocking together. I felt completely comfortable physically (I have the most amazing bed ever), but spiritually, mentally, emotionally, I was getting ambushed.

I got a call this morning from a debt collector. It wasn’t anything ostentatious, just a hospital bill from when I went to the ER last semester for strep throat (I tried calling out of work the night before, but my then-boss said she was going to fire me if I didn’t show up to work that morning at 4am with a doctors excuse).

I thought I paid the bill last semester, so I double checked my bank statements, and sure enough there was a check to Centra for $110. But the debt collector said that was separate from the $125 bill she had. The $110 was only for the room. The $125 was for the actual doctor. It would have been cheaper just getting fired.

So, needless to say – that set me back some (as did the $570 it took to fix my car the other week).

With money on the mind, I started looking into borrowing money for classes this summer. So I called financial aid to see how much I could borrow, and let's just say it never goes as expected and it always puts me in a bad mood. College is so darn expensive!

At this point, I'm just depressed. Seriously. So I went into work at 6:30, worked until 10:30, picked up a shift for this morning from 9am-3pm, and signed up for four extra hours to my already 8-hour workday on Saturday, where, for every extra two-hours I work, I'll earn a $10 giftcard to Sheetz. Gas money, hello.

I might be a little bitter that I won’t get to go home earlier today or be able to stay longer on Saturday, but you know – you just have to do what you have to do to avoid a visit from the repo man.

I know that God has me right where He wants me - even if that place has me up to my eyebrows in debt. But sometimes for that very reason (and this is just my flesh speaking),  I resent it. How on earth am I going to be able to do this whole adult-life thing after college? What kind of job am I going to get that will allow me to pull rent all by myself, bills all by myself, and these student loans all by myself? How in the world is this going to be worth it?


Oddly enough, the most comforting thing I heard today was that God cares more about our character than He does our comfort.

I'll be shutting up now.

-C