Futureless

In addition to being sad etc as per my previous post, I also find that I am now without a purpose and a future.

I used to be a mediocre engineer (with every younger engineer being promoted over me) making it through the day with the knowledge that this is not my true calling, just a stop-gap until I get ordained. Now my chances of ordination are rock bottom, and I don't know if I would want it even if it were available.

I don't fancy living out my days as a mediocre engineer.

I don't fancy retiring just so I can get my house in order and do my garden. What kind of selfish and empty life is that?

I don't want to get old and have a life that is wracked by pain and senility, with my children resentfully changing my soiled pants.

I don't want to go and join another church and gradually have to work my way up through the ranks again. What an exercise in futility!

O do want to get back into railway modelling and create a fantastic 1930's landscape in my attic with multiple layers of railway intersecting seamlessly with each other as trains travel around them in a perfect and accident-free timetable. But that would be a very selfish way to live. (see gardening, above)

But the trouble with not being selfish is that you live all the time for others and end up feeling squashed.

Basically, I don't know why I bother getting out of bed in the morning. The only reason I keep on with life is that it would be unfair on the wife and kids for me to give up on the practicalities of daily life.

So I have no future.

I have no hope.

I know that the scripture says: "For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." (Jeremiah 29:11 - the verse the Lord gave me once when I hospitalised my boss by accidentally stabbing him in the buttock with a pair of scissors). But I am still looking, with sore eyes, for that scripture to be fulfilled.