Teapot's Long Walk

At the end of my last post, Satan had delivered his one-two punch of guilt and self doubt. I was leaving a job I had truly loved, and a place that I had thought rested on the pinnacle of the Christian faith, and I was walking toward my van to leave both forever. And everything was black. Everything. My faith in man and God was gone, and I did not want to move forward.

I resigned of my own choice. But that decision was based on how the administration of my department had treated me as a woman, and co-worker, as well as the lack of support from the school administration. I had fought, since my husband had left the school two years before, to receive the same benefits as my male co-workers. After a long year of paying tuition for the only child enrolled at that time, and a struggle to work until five and throughout the summer without the benefit of paid child care, my struggles seem to pay off, and I was granted back tuition and child care. I was exceptionally happy, and I felt validated. The news came while my family was on vacation in South Dakota, and I actually looked forward to the end of vacation and my return to work.

Someone posted the other day on Facebook saying that if you can tell your story without crying, then you are healed. But, even four years later, I still can't talk or write about this without shedding a least a few tears. 

When I returned to work after vacation, things became much worse. I had a staff co-worker lie directly to my face, and then deny it. I overheard comments and implications about how I, along with one or two other department employees needed to be forced out because we demanded too much training for our student workers. And I found that many of the female students did not want to deal with that same co-worker because of the questionable things he said to them. Scheduling changes in training were made and I was not informed, along with many other actions and talks that I now realize were harassment. At one staff meeting, I made the statement that if I were a man, I would be more respected. One co-worker said to me under his

breath "You know, there's an operation for that."I did report it, and I was brushed aside. Yet I still heard in chapel, and in faculty staff meetings that all these kinds of decisions were made by godly men, making prayerful, godly choices. And I kept trying.

But day after day, I returned home from work, crying, stressed and sick. Rumors about me and my family flew around the school, and made their way to my church. It wasn't that I was worried about the rumors because that's just what they were. But it was those who heard them, knew they weren't true and did nothing. At all. In fact, the main rumormonger was promoted above to "keep him away from the students as you requested." As the school year passed, I knew I had to leave for my own health, and for my family.

That long walk was only a hundred feet or so, but by the time I reached the driver's side door, I had determined that God must be watching from very far away, if indeed He existed, and that I had been an idiot to trust that He would bother with me.

So, here I am again-at that van. The walk is over, but the next few months were very dark. Again, I say that if God had not watched over me, and lead me even in my blindness toward Him, I would not be here to write these words.

Next, I'll finish the details of those darkest months, and share how God in His wisdom and grace delivered me.

God is Good,

Teapotjan