on independence

Out of the three older children in my family, I'm not quite like the other 2. My oldest sister has always been very driven, and she went to college in Oklahoma and graduated and moved to Tulsa. She has he own place and her own job and takes care of herself quite well. She bought her own car and all of that stuff that goes along with being an idependent adult.

My younger sister also went to college in Oklahoma, and she lives in an apartment and has two jobs, her own car, and pays bills and all of those things a responsible adult does.

And then there's me. I live at home, drive a family car, don't pay rent or any other significant form of a bill, and I have decided that it's time to leave the nest and jump out into the world. I graduated college, that was a big step. I've got a full time job at a hospital, and substitute teach when I can. But right now I'm trying to move to Oklahoma to be with my sisters and get a teaching job down there. It's really hard, though, because there are a lot of things that I don't know how to cover. I don't know how to fill out applications if my teaching certificate is still waiting to be filed. And I don't know where to go or who to call to make sure that I'll even be certified in Oklahoma in the first place. I call and call and get transfered over and over and I can never get an answer. And I can't really get much of anything done sitting up here in Michigan. But there's no sense moving to Oklahoma before I can get a job, when I have a well paying job up here. Granted, it's not a teaching job, it pays me well. So I'm at a standstill. I want to send resumes and test scores and letters to school districts, because I know that if they have those things they'll see how valuable I can be to their schools. But they want the applications filled out--and I can't complete them because of the questions I can't answer.

It's very frustrating, becasue all I want to do is move forward. I worked extra hard in school to finish early, I took all of my tests and scored well, I made a resume, got letters of recommendation, completed student teaching, familiarized myself with Oklahoma state curriculum and the individual school districts and buildings and cities. I can't be any more prepared short of doing my student teaching down there. I either have to just pick up and move and try to do things while I'm down there and pray that I'll get a job before I run out of money; or keep trying to do it from up here while I save up more money.

I know that God's going to provide, but it's hard to tell if that means he'll provide if I move down there with nothing; or if he's currently providing through my free home and job up here. I need to be in two places at once, and I can't. I need to know the right numbers to call so I don't keep getting the runaround about my certification. I need to just chill out, but I'm so afraid of things going wrong. I'm just stuck.