Several possible directions

Hello, God--and today I say "good afternoon" instead of "good morning."  I don't usually write anything here in the afternoons, but here I am.  Life's been getting more than a bit strange, more than a bit complicated, and I'm not sure that I'm handling it too well.  I've spent the last week being sick, which usually is a result just as much from stress as from any bug or virus that I've encountered.  And it's very true--I'm very stressed these days, and there really isn't any indication that there's any sort of financial change in my future that will relieve me of the stress.  We're in a very precarious situation, and I have no idea how I should approach it or try to deal with it.  I'm simply unprepared for this sort of thing.

I know in my heart that my faith should be strong enough to keep me from stressing out about possibly running out of money.  It's never happened in the past, and it shouldn't happen now.  But I've made so many efforts to have a positive effect on our finances that I'm finding it hard to believe that anything I do is going to succeed.  I have some tiny bit of success, but no real true success.  In fact, we're now going to have to use the last of my retirement money (which isn't much to begin with) just to make it through this winter, it appears.  And things are happening all at once--car problems, annual insurance payments, etc.--so it's not simply a question of a few bills that we need to take care of.

I suppose that the most important question of all is where I should go from here.  I know what many people say about following our passion and doing the things that we love to do, but I've been trying that for a while, to no avail.  On the other hand, I don't see how getting an extra low-paying job is going to make much of a difference, other than turning me into a miserable person who doesn't have time to spend with his wife or on things that I love doing.  I might get paychecks, but I most certainly wouldn't be living my life fully and richly.  Is this latter idea just a pipe dream, or is it something I should be expecting out of life?  Could it be that my own fears and attitudes are keeping me in financial straits?  Somehow, I'm not sure that I see the value in blaming myself for thoughts and ideas that have been ingrained in me by others for so many years.

So I give it to you.  Yours is now the financial situation, and yours are also the choices that I'll be needing to make about my future.  Are there opportunities out there for me?  Or am I doomed to constantly worry about money, never quite having enough no matter how much or how hard I work?

A reply:

We've talked about this before.  But I understand that after many years of building certain beliefs and expectations, it's not really possible to simply change them on demand, even if you hear something from me.  All I can tell you is that I want you to thrive, not to suffer; I want you to enjoy life, not to fear it.  And you should be able to thrive in any situation, as long as your basic needs are being met--and so far, they are.  What's happening is that you're worrying about what will happen "when the money runs out"--you're worrying about a future that you don't know is coming.  The first thing for you to do is to focus on the present, know that all of your needs are being met right now, and be grateful for and happy about that.  When you're able to do that, we can talk more.  I don't want to go into too much detail now because I think that you really should focus on this particular "assignment," if you will.