They say everything happens for a reason. It's what I've had to tell myself for a while now through everything I've been through. It's part of what gets me through (besides making light of everything and having a good laugh in lieu of driving off the nearest cliff).
And so, I have a very powerful story of faith and prayer to share with you.
Some amazing changes have just come about within the last hour and they are UN-believable!
As many of you know, I have a passion for music and together with my husband and my good friend, Brian, who are both amazing talents, I have been writing and recording music and trying to get an album released for a long time now.
But there have been many obstacles:
1. Four children (three ages 4 and under).
2. Full time job transcribing medical reports.
3. Lack of inspiration, probably most likely due to fatigue.
4. Lack of funds due to financial strain.
Since the day I turned 19 and married for the first time, I have been required to work full time. My income has been needed. And I have worked long and hard improving upon my skills, studying in my spare time to keep abreast of the latest information needed to do my job properly and make myself into the ultimate transcribing robot - an irreplaceable one.
In the eleven years that I have worked in this field, I have never been without work. I may have switched up which company I worked for or whether or not I even worked for a company, but I have NEVER had a lapse in work EVER.
A lot of difficult things have happened for myself and my little family. In spite of our many efforts to budget our money, pay our tithing (I'm Mormon - we pay 10% back to the church. I know those of you who are not of my faith may find this ludicrous, especially in my situation, but my husband and I view it as a privilege and gladly pay it, relying on our faith in God to provide for us, which He always has), etc., we are constantly late on bills, wondering where our next meal is going to come from, and lie awake many nights trying to figure out how to better our situation.
We have taken on more work, sought out work, worked longer hours, and constantly arranged and re-arranged - just trying ANYTHING to better our lives, but to no avail.
Always, this urge to work on music and produce an album has been in the back of my mind and whatever little time and energy I've had, I've written, but the process has been long and tedious and still, after all these years (since 2004), I've never really put out a solid album for sale or taken it to that next level that I would need to in order to make this my career. Part of me has always been afraid. I've never had the faith, I guess, to take that leap and make it happen. It's always been further down my list of priorities because I always had work and children calling.
My recent effort to better our situation included putting my children into full time daycare. I felt this would enable me to "crank" out the work and make at least double what I've been making, which would in turn help us climb up out of our hole. In the last couple of weeks, despite my efforts, I've always been exhausted, distracted, and just couldn't quite produce the amount of work I wanted to. I felt a depression over my family issues and our financial issues, and my baby boy hasn't been sleeping much, and basically my whole world has been falling apart.
My husband is always telling me to work on the music. "That is what we need to be focusing on. " I've always snapped back at him that that is ridiculous and we need money and the music will have to wait.
During this last week, I noticed my infant son acting strangely. He seemed to focus on something in a room and would smile and babble in his baby talk. He even lifted his hand and waved several times. I would turn and try to look and he would squirm around, trying to keep his gaze on whatever it was.
One morning, around 2:00 AM, he awoke and, completely exhausted, I stumbled out of bed, picked him up and staggered down the hall. I prepared him a bottle and fed him, but he kept pulling away, staring at a spot in the room and smiling and babbling. I would roll my eyes and sigh and say, "Come on, Mr. Z. Drink your bottle, baby." When he finished, he fought to sit up on my lap, so I held him up and he raised his hand and waved and said, "Hi." He's ONLY 8 1/2 months. My eyes practically bugged out of my head and I said, "Did you just say hi?" He smiled at me and then turned back to the spot in the room, waved his hand again and said, "Gampa." My mouth DROPPED open.
Bertrand's father passed away many years ago from cancer. I never had the opportunity to meet him, but often Bertrand has expressed that he can feel his presence and that he feels his father, a once famous musician in France, is guiding him as he plays the drums. And now, here he seemed to be - in the room with us - and my baby was excitedly waving and trying to speak to him. I felt goosebumps all over my body. I didn't feel fear, just calm and wonderment.
And t hen this last weekend I finally fell into it - a huge depression. I mean HUGE! I've been so down, I didn't want to be around anyone, didn't want to see anyone, didn't want to do anything, didn't want to eat or sleep, just plain didn't care. I would sit in front of my computer and just stare blankly.
Finally, my husband offered to give me a priesthood blessing - a blessing of comfort and peace. ANYTHING to help me out of my emotional abyss. I was so numb and empty, I thanked him, but declined stating that I didn't think anything could help me and I just wanted to be left alone. I told him, "I can figure this out. I always do. I just need to be left alone and I will do my crying and feeling sorry for myself and then I will get up and take action and fix this." And so, knowing full well my stubborn nature, he helplessly walked away and let me be.
On Sunday I didn't attend church. I was so exhausted I could barely move. I knew it was emotional exhaustion causing an overwhelming physical exhaustion. I just laid there and let my husband take care of the children and ready himself for church as he had a lesson to give. I felt terrible inside. I watched my dear, sweet husband just patiently deal with all of this and I knew it wasn't fair what I was doing to him...and to my children.
Finally, Sunday afternoon, I approached my husband and said, "Can you give me a blessing now?"
He said nothing.
I said, "Honey? Did you hear me?"
He said, "Yeah. Are you sure?"
I sighed deeply and said, "Yeah. I need help. I've finally realized I can't do this alone and I need a blessing to get me through this."
And so he followed me into our bedroom where he laid his hands on my head and after a few moments began to give me a blessing of comfort and peace through his priesthood power. I sat there very numb. I tried to feel something, but I couldn't. In fact, I started feeling a slight annoyance over his blessing. A lot of the things he said I felt were just him giving me a lecture - telling me to stay close to the Lord, read my scriptures, appreciate and draw closer to my children, remember the talents I was blessed with and focus my attention on those. One thing he said a couple of times was, "You know what you have to do."
As soon as he was done, I sat there a few moments silently. He stepped back and looked at me and asked, "Do you feel better?" I sighed and glanced over at him and replied, tonelessly, "Yeah. Thanks, honey." Then I proceeded to walk away.
"What part of the blessing made you feel better?" He asked.
I stopped dead in my tracks and slowly turned around and shrugged and said, "I don't know. I guess all of it. I know - I need to read my scriptures and pray and....yeah."
Later that evening, the tension between us grew and I finally spilled it to him later in our room.
"I'm sorry, hon, but it just felt like you were giving me a lecture or something. I worry that those words were your own and not coming from the Lord."
I saw the expression on his face instantly turn to anger, but he tried to suppress it. "Fine", he calmly replied. "Let me call another man from the ward and have HIM come give you a blessing. Who do you trust to give you a better blessing? Tell me and I'll call him."
I released a huge sigh and looked down and said, "No, hon. I don't want that. I'm sorry. I just....I don't know what's wrong with me. I just feel so numb right now. And lost. Thank you for the blessing. I'm so sorry I said those things. That was terrible. Thank you for bringing the priesthood into our home and blessing our lives with it. And thank you for being so willing to give me and our children a blessing whenever we need it." I hugged him, but I could feel the tension and hurt in him, so I let him be.
Monday evening I reluctantly agreed to jam with Bertrand. I had written a new song and he was trying to solidify his drumming on it. We ran through the song a few times and I perked up a bit. He was solid. It sounded so good. It renewed my hope that we could do this and it would be good.
I expressed my excitement to him and said, "Let's make a point to jam every night and then try to get into the studio next week if we get some more money in and get this song laid down properly." He agreed and we went about our evening, getting kids into bed, etc. Later that night I felt inspired to work on music and so I worked until midnight. By that point I was literally nodding off as I composed. I think the fact that I was working on "Forbidden Love Lullaby", key word being "lullaby" didn't help my situation.
And then TODAY happened. And the turn of events was CRAZY! ABSOLUTELY CRAZY!!!!
It all started with me dropping my kids off at daycare, returning home and just staring at my keyboard. I couldn't bring myself to work. I didn't want to. I felt so much inspiration and I just wanted to work on music. I decided to put off my work for a little while longer and just sit down at my keyboard for a moment. After working on music for about an hour I stared out the window and thought, "I wish I'd just lose my job so I could work on music all day."
Then, realizing that my kids were in daycare, I was paying for their time to be there and I needed to make money to be able to pay for that and our bills, I arose from my keyboard, sat at my computer, downloaded some files and slowly began to type, heaving several sighs as I went along, occasionally glancing at my keyboard.
My good friend, Jenn, called me and we visited for a few minutes and then I heard another call coming through. I pulled the phone back, saw that it was my manager from the transcription company I worked for, and told Jenn I had to go.
I clicked over and the conversation went like this:
PSI: Hi Kristin. How are you?
ME: Fine, thanks.
PSI: You sure?
ME: Yeees. (chuckling)
PSI: I have really bad news. (heaving a big sigh)
ME: Ok.
PSI: We've just lost half of our accounts and there's no way we can keep everyone busy enough, so we have to lay off 50 transcriptionists. This decision has been very difficult and it has nothing to do with your quality of work or anything. It's just that you haven't been with us as long as some of the others and so....we have to let you go.
ME: (Very matter-of-fact). Ok. That's Ok.
I felt so much peace, it was insane! It was SO unlike me! I typically remain calm, but inside it's like the lions have escaped at the zoo and they're ravenously hungry and the overcrowded zoo is running for the gate all at the same time and people are getting trampled and....you get the idea.
But this time was different. I felt totally calm. It was almost like I had expected this phone call and it was all very matter-of-fact and no big deal.
My manager proceeded to tell me that she couldn't even give me any notice - that I needed to stop working right then and there and call the computer guy for the company to help talk me through erasing everything from my system. I agreed and thanked her and said, "It's Ok. I'll call him right now. Thanks."
She gave me the name and number of the company that had taken over the accounts and informed me that they were short-staffed and hiring. She urged me to call them and see if I could get on. Then she promised that if they received any new accounts, I'd be one of the first hired back. I thanked her and hung up.
I called the company in Utah and spoke to the manager. She warned me that many transcriptionists from PSI had already called and that when they heard about the terms with this new company, they ran away screaming. I chuckled and said, "It's OK. I've worked in many different types of situations, so I'm sure it won't be foreign to me." She agreed to send me the information and told me to call her if I was still interested.
During that conversation, Bertrand stopped in briefly. As I spoke on the phone, I scribbled out the words, "I just got laid off" on a piece of paper. His eyes bugged out of his head and he gasped, "Are you SERIOUS? Oh my gosh. You're joking, right?" I smiled and shook my head "no." Then I held up a finger to signal I needed just a minute and mouthed the words, "It's OK."
After getting off the phone with the manager and assuring my husband that all would be well and that I felt peace over this. I could feel tears welling up in my eyes as it hit me - I need to pray. I need the Lord to guide me. This is all happening for a reason and I know He'll direct me and watch over us like He always has. I explained this to my husband with tear-filled eyes and he asked, "Then why are you crying - if you feel so much peace?" I responded, "Because. I know that everything will be Ok. I feel so much peace right now and I actually I'm excited to discover what's in store for me now."
I then prodded him along to go back to work and told him I needed to be alone to pray and think about this and figure out what to do next. He left and I immediately proceeded to check out the latest transcription job postings on line.
They were grim. Bad hours. Bad pay. Bad conditions over all. I realized quickly that I had been spoiled by PSI and that I wasn't about to find anything like it with any other company. The only jobs available right now require me to work weekends, Saturday AND Sunday - ALL DAY or work midnight to 5:00 AM.
I decided to stick with my original plan and retreat to my room to kneel and pray and ask for the Lord's guidance. As I knelt, I pondered for a few minutes what was happening and the words of the blessing I had received entered my mind again. I thought for a moment about what I wanted to ask the Lord and then I began my prayer.
I started out asking, "Please help me to be able to know if transcription is the right avenue for me to continue in. I feel like I should try to apply for jobs and find another job quickly in that field to help us through while I continue to work on my album and...."
My mind went blank. Absolutely blank. I had ZERO thoughts. It was like a room with four white walls and there was nothing in it. NOTHING! I knelt there completely dumb-founded. I finally opened my eyes and looked heavenward and thought, "This is weird." Then I remembered what I had learned - if you have a stupor of thought, that's the answer that something isn't right. I thought for a minute and then decided to change what I was asking for. I closed my eyes and began again - "Please help me to know if this is right to concentrate on the music now. I have my children in daycare the rest of this week and it's already paid for, so if it's right for me to take this time to finish my album, please help me to know that this is right. I feel like I should take advantage of this time and..."
And that's when the ideas came flooding to my head like a dam breaking and the waters overtaking.
Finish the album.
Don't look for another job.
Take full advantage of this week your kids are in daycare.
Call Brian right now.
Tell him you need to get into the studio and finish the album this week.
Tell him you don't have money to pay him right now. He'll be OK to wait for the money.
Tell him you need as much time as he has to give you.
Work on music every night with Bertrand.
He's ready with the drums. There's no need to wait.
He can do this.
You can do this.
You're ready.
Now is the time.
Put whatever music you get done this week on I-tunes.
The money will come in from that and get you by until the album is completely finished and ready to put out.
I just knelt there, my mouth gaping open, the thoughts flowing through my mind like a waterfall. And then they stopped. And I suddenly felt a warmth and peace. I slowly stood up and stared out the window for a second.
Then I grabbed the phone and called Brian. I got his voicemail, so I left a message for him to call me back as SOON as he got a chance.
Then I called and explained to Bertrand what had just happened. I could hear him sniffling on the other end.
"Are you OK, honey?" I asked.
"Yep. I know this is the right thing too." He replied. "Those words in the blessing I gave you were NOT MINE! I promise you that. I've been waiting for you to figure that out."
I began to sniffle with him over the phone.
Just then the other line rang. It was Brian. I told Bertrand I had to go and clicked over.
"Kristin's transcription", Brian said with a laugh. He always greets me this way.
"Not anymore", I stated proudly.
"WHAT? What's going on?" He nearly shouted into the phone.
"I've been laid off."
"Are you kidding me? What's happening?"
"Brian. I don't mean to get all religious fanatic on you, but..."
"Oh no", he grumbled and then chuckled. "OK. Let's have it."
I then proceeded to tell Brian the nutshell version of this extremely long story. And, just as my answer from the Lord had come to me, he was completely on board AND, amazingly, the rest of his week was completely open.
"Bring Bertrand's drums in Wednesday night. We'll get everything set up, tuned and ready to go. Thursday he can come in and lay down the drums. Then we'll spend the rest of the week getting all of your stuff down."
I was overjoyed. Then came the important part - "Brian", I started in. "I can't pay you right now."
"That's Ok." He responded. "I can wait."
"Brian. As soon as my tax return arrives, I will pay you for all of the hours you've spent with me in the studio."
"Sounds good to me. I'm fine." He replied again.
This is Brian's livelihood. It's how he makes his money. Things haven't exactly been easy for him either and yet here he was agreeing to just let me come spend hours and hours, day after day in his studio without paying right now.
And so, this is the plan. I will continue to pray and seek guidance and I will stay on the course and keep the faith. I have NO idea what happens after that, but I have to focus on the task at hand - get as many songs completed and mixed this week and get them on I-tunes and my strong impression is that all of these people from all over the world who have been begging for us to put our music out there for them to buy will come through and buy it.
This has just been an amazing experience and I know that there will still be obstacles. My faith will still be tested, possibly even very severely. But I know that through all of this, the Lord will guide me if I just stay close to Him. If I just do exactly what I feel impressed to do - no matter how grim things may look. I know this is what I'm supposed to be doing and I know somehow we will make it through.
And then he tried to mimic me and this was the result.
And finally, we bribed John by telling him that if he let us snap a photo of him doing the face exercise and post it, we would let him continue to grow his hair long. He agreed, we snapped the picture and then he asked, "Ok, so I get to keep growing my hair long, right?" to which I responded, "Yes, for one more day." HAHA! SUCKA!
