It's The Only Way

This world is full of concerns. I doubt anyone is immune from them or at least a portion of them. There are basic concerns like eating, shelter and safety. There are concerns about our material wants. There are societal concerns about how we are perceived. There are concerns which span across the territories of other concerns, interwoven into the fabric of our underlying needs. Concerns are not worries, but they tend to head that way with alarming rapidity.

I have a few concerns right now. I am concerned with procuring a steady source of income. I don't know where that might come from. Having devoted my life to being obedient to God's leading, I have abandoned the traditional paths toward financial independence. God's taken care of us and that's never been in question. The strange part, though, is when I have to start asking myself about how I can meet our family's financial needs. When I ask those questions, I don't have any satisfying answers. In a purely utilitarian sense, I would have been far better off trying to find a (in the words of my brother) soul-sucking career. It would have been disobedient. It would have destroyed me as a person. But... it would have projected financial certainties into our lives. While I ponder the concerns of providing money for our family, I can't help but feel that (in a purely secular sense) I should have been less focused on obedience and more focused on money.

I've tried to relay this conundrum in the past with little success. It is obvious that obedience supersedes any monetary concern. It is obvious in the idealistic sense. It is less obvious in the "we are hungry and need food" sense. However, since I have devoted my life solely to obedience with no concern for money and no concern for provision, I am functionally trapped in a place in life where I have no recourse but to hope that obedience alone will somehow pay the bills. I say this because, as I have indicated with lesser words in the past, I have no capacity for providing the kind of financial support my family needs. I really can't over-stress this point. I dropped out of college. I worked as a slave for more than five years and tolerated this treatment simply because I believed it would lead to greater productivity in writing. I pursued writing as a "full-time" career, leaving my wife to find means in the workplace through several undesirable or consuming occupations.

At the end of a decade supported by these machinations, I have not achieved financial independence. In fact, quite the opposite. At the end of this decade I have come to the conclusion that I no longer believe our family will be supported by my writing. The premise I based my actions of the last decade upon has now been abandoned. That leaves me... where?

Where am I?