Unexpected Change of Circumstances

"I will bring the one-third through the fire,

Will refine them as silver is refined,

And test them as gold is tested.

They will call on My name,

And I will answer them.

I will say, ‘This is My people’;

And each one will say, ‘The Lord is my God.’ ”

Zechariah 13:9

Note: I am most grateful for the funding received thus far. 12, 574. For a fuller understanding of the trials, both material and spiritual, please read below. And please let it be noted that I am working now, at what was to be my third job as a floater for a Home Health Care Agency, owned by a brethren. May the Lord Bless her and her work. .My car engine catastrophically failed for the third time just two weeks after having been installed. It failed on the 13 of June, after my first shift with this company. Because of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, I need help with the moving process as well. I am still attending classes to become a Peer Support Specialist in addition to having just received my CNA certification. I passed the CNA exam for New York on the 22nd of June 2026. The loss of my position occurred on the 8 of July, 2026, while the facility that wrongfully terminated me was using me in their print and television ad campaign.

Thank you all for Helping Me Stay Housed and to Get Back To Work with Reliable Transportation

I've been gone for a while as I've had an unexpected series of unfortunate events.

• I wasn't happy with the printing quality of the planners on one hand (I ordered a test sample), so I'm just going to for now make small quantities with another printing entity for now. And for review for next year. But also my computer crashed due to lack of space, and I'm in the process of rectifying that. Still a great computer, just need to add space to it.

• My car, sold to me by a brethren, broke down. Again. Same Issue. He refuses to do right and remedy it so I've had to resort to other measures. I've been dealing with this issue for three years.

• The building I was living in was sold to a buyer who did not contact us nor give us instructions about where to send the rent check, and then suddenly decided to evict the tenants. My legal aide Lawyer did a good job in handling this. There were two tenants that had been there 15 years and 22 years respectively, and he was trying to operate outside of the law. I live in New York.

• And the last thing that happened was that I lost a job I had been thinking was the answer to a childhood dream of helping others. And it was an unjust termination forced by a misguided former member of my parish. When a relative heard about it she started weeping, and I told her, don't be angry. And yet this job, of all the ones I have had, meant so much to me, and I was doing a good job there. I have been crying too. I felt as though I was finally escaping the curse of my foster mother. However, the enemy of mankind found a way.

I told my relative this is just a pattern that we've been used to, our foster mother used to sabotage us and humiliate us whenever we did a good thing that the community recognised, and this pattern, amongst many, was set in place by the dark forces that want to destroy our souls, and that will use anyone they are able to, to re-enact this pattern in order for us to lose faith in God. But through this I learned something the hard way: what the saints say about being silent about your goals and plans, even if God himself has made and revealed those plans for you.

Malice and ill-will fueled by jealousy is a real thing, and those fueled by worldly expectations of how you should act and should be because of the colour of your skin, your station in life, or the way people play you against others because of those expectations, and I'm slowly realising that it -the passions- operates in real time, in this world. And in my space. And yet, I am the most optimistic person I know, even with my suicidal ideations. Because I trust in the Lord. I don't trust in people, but I do trust the Lord. Because I trust in the Lord, I can see success where others see failure. But I know everything must be done in a way that is pleasing to the Lord. And everything is in God's own time.

The world tries to pretend with its scientese language that the passions, as the Church understands them, don't exist, or that calm, serene people don't experience it at all. The hidden ones, the quiet ones; those able to hide--but the Lord says what is done in the secret darkness--the lies, the gossip and false witnesses, the betrayals, the inability to stand the good fortune of others, will come out. Your deeds will be revealed, those in your hearts, and those passions in your souls that you don't fight...by omission or commission, they will be revealed, for the Lord does not lie, and His promises are eternal. And He sees everything. And for as long as I have known Him, He has fought my battles. He is my God, and much as He is yours, and it doesn't matter race, greek, jew, bond or freeman, male or female. People deceive themselves because they make secret, unwritten rules about worldly affiliations that weaken the Christian bond of the Body of Christ. I'm all for Christian culture; I'm not for the arrogant expression and forceful expectations that I must become another ethnicity in order to experience the true grace of God, or to participate fully in the Christian community of His body. I believe you should have respect for the country you reside in and you are oblilgated as a Christian to understand and align yourself with the Mission of the Church which is: To Teach the Gospel to All Nations. Not erase your Christian-inspired culture, but recognize the mission of the Church is for all men; And And you do not have a monopoly on it. Thus, it is not okay for a group to allow a member of that group to harm the "convert" simply because you want representation of your group in the world. And you can't say who is in and who is out because of the language a person speaks, especially if you are the immigrant.

I know by my Faith what I am supposed to be doing now. Forgiving. It is not my strong suit. Not forgiving is like a shield that protects me from being hurt again. And yet, I believe in the Justice of God. I believe He sees my struggles, the struggle of all his lambs who have been persecuted in the Church (persecution outside of the Church is to be expected), but to be persecuted within it-by members of it was not what I was expecting. He sees my struggles to not be as my natal environment would have formed me to be, but to eventually to be able to choose Him, over and over again, no matter how the enemy of man makes use of his minions both of the spirits and those of the flesh to harm the souls of people who he thinks should be his, because he has made their lives so miserable, from the beginning, and continues using other people to do so. The enemy uses men inside and outside of the Church in high and in lowly places. I'm learning how true this is.

It is said that all good is the will of God, and the bad things that happen to you are permitted by God. When I was young, I used to be perplexed by a few scriptural verses of the bible. Those specifically on the testings of God. Why, every time I try to stand, I get knocked down? Every time this happened, I would wonder, is this the testing?. And how I am supposed to love and thank God for this "permitting". Like, should I have been rejoicing when my African-American mom was beating me as though I was a slave? Shocked? I'm sure I'm not the only family that has happened in, no matter what race.

Nonetheless, a book I have read, Providence of God by St. John Chrysostom, helps me on this path in my thoughts. Basically, St. John is describing how God promised individuals things, and the opposite happens. Like Abraham, and like David. Abraham waited many years for his child, Isaac, and David endured the jealousy of Saul. God promised these men a path in life and the opposite happened. A long wait in one, and persecution in the other. And I am reminded of the Saint who was a Roman general, who when his whole family converted to Christ, the whole family suffered misfortune and was separated from each other for over a decade. Or how when St. Mary of Egypt finally took the Faith seriously and repented, she was sent to the desert to struggle with the sins that had imprisoned her soul and her flesh. And this is what faith looks like.

It looks like a struggle to hold on to it, by making righteous choices not to indulge in sinful behaviour in the face of False Evidence Appearing Real. In the face of the FEAR that your mother's or father's predictions about you will be correct. FEAR that our government will destroy its people. FEAR that your wife or husband will betray you, or your children will grow up not to love you or worse they will lose their souls before God. FEAR that you will lose your job if you don't abide by godless rules of engagement. ​FEAR that the world will not know your worth, that you will not be feted by the masses. ​FEAR that you will be nothing in this world​ or it will destroy you.   FEAR that you will not be able to provide for yourself and your family. After all, many of you have survived communist regimes because members of your family succumbed to an ungodly fear.   ​The cross of the Lord before the masses has shown us and continues to show us how to conquer this fear. By bearing the cross, we are "permitted" to have trials, that is, to be tested in the fining pot, also known as a crucible, and you know what​?...this is both a learned spiritual skill and a grace of mercy given us by the Lord, all at the same time. In the struggle, we begin the process of acquiring the grace of the Lord, that returns us to His bosom; that restores us to His image and likeness.

And this is how one must keep the Faith, no matter what. Because the promises will come true! It's about Faith. and it is about Forgiveness. In the end, it is about Faith that prevails in the midst of disaster. In the midst of never belonging because no matter where you were, amongst kin or non-kin, you were an orphan. And the Lord knows that the predators seek the weakest, that which seems 'least protected' to devour. Coming from this background, it seems the lesson the Lord wants to teach me is to persevere in faith-and to forgive.

And learning to trust in the sincere act of forgiving people, is something I have to work on in all aspects of my behaviour, because I believe in the Merciful Justice of God; and I know, according to scripture, that I must forgive in order to be forgiven; and despite myself being a fallen being, I can see this as the ineffable Love God demonstrates to the worse of his people who call themselves by His name but who are actually in the camp of that one who opposes Him. And in God's Love for His People is His Wisdom, His Mercy, His Justice. And the Christian understanding of Justice is not punishment, but setting straight, making whole, granting healing that which will not cause harm but that will induce repentance and longing for God. As long as a man has breath, he will be able to choose repentance and communion with God; that is why we do not judge to condemn but to discern. There is a difference: one allows for prayer for one's enemies, and the other brings upon us our own condemnation upon our heads. For only God knows the wounds and the hearts of every man. And we pray our enemies are receptive to His grace. Of all the challenges I've had in my life, for this reason this most recent is the worst pain for me. I am raw, embittered, scared, and fearful of the future; but I am also trying to hold on. To Christ.

Psalm 18

God the Sovereign Savior

 I will love You, O Lord, my strength.² The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; My God, my strength, in whom I will trust; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.³ I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised; So shall I be saved from my enemies.