The fall JCrew catalog is in the trash.

It’s too beautiful and it’s hard to be aspirational now. There doesn’t seem to be enough space in my heart these days to know what I’m missing. In the trash it goes.

October is my least favorite month. Most of my high summer talk is less a love of the sun and more of a fear of fall. The hardest parts of life seem to fall in the month of October and for that reason alone I can’t love it. There is too much residue. It’s dusty and hard.

And yet here we are. October is here.

I’m moving this month. I moved two years ago in October. I move five years ago in October. I moved eight years ago in October.

Last year I started a temporary job in October with the hopes of expansion to a full-time position by the turn of the year. Three weeks in much of the workforce was laid off and for me, the writing placed on the wall. Another temporary position ends this month too.

I have friends struggling with any number of things and though they are brave and full of faith, there are tears at times. There are moments it all seems too much.

I have been unemployed now for a year and a half. Extended unemployment is a lot of things, one of the more difficult being the gradual slipping away of what I once knew, like watching the leaves fall off a tree one by one. There is no mystery of how this will end. I’ll be pretty barren for a while. Barren bank account, barren house. Today I regret turning down job opportunities that seemed less than the best. Today those decisions seem haughty. Had I said yes, maybe October would sting a little less.

Several months ago I scheduled a haircut. I did the math and just could not make my bank account numbers work to afford it. I picked up my phone to cancel and wanted with all the world to tell her I was sick and couldn’t come in. But instead, I was honest. I told her the days had been tight and I couldn’t swing it but I would reschedule for a later date and asked her to pray I would get over the vanity of a few gray hairs. She told me to come, the haircut was on her, and what did I want from Chick Fil A? Breakfast would be waiting when I got there. I doubled over in tears at her kindness.

I made a decision that day. I decided regardless of how hard it seemed, regardless of how much I wanted to hide, I would show up and tell the truth. I would not try to be too strong or proud. I would raise my hand and admit I needed help. I decided the burden of holding it together hurt way more than the temporary sting of humility.

Here is the truth as I know it today: I am in my thirties, unmarried, childless, homeless and unemployed. I need to pack and move in the next few weeks and nothing rattles my sense of stability like moving. I’ve cried a lot. I need help because as it turns out, I cannot pick up a couch by myself, but I hate asking for help because help is all I’ve needed in the past year. I don’t know how I’m going to pay for a U-haul or storage unit. Moving is hard. Unemployment is hard.

These things are also true: The industrious American dream is not the boss of me. My life may look backward and bleak, but I know with all that’s in me I followed Jesus right into the dusty and hard and that’s ok because Jesus walked straight into the hard too. Endurance and patience are holy. People are kind and I don’t deserve an ounce of it.

The most true of all, I have hope.

I want to believe that if I ask for bread I will not be given a stone. My faith is weak some days, especially when it feels as if I am carrying a load of rocks. For this day, maybe just this minute, I’m choosing to believe these are stones of a story. This October I’ll kneel down in the mud and build an Ebenezer out of these rocks. For this far you have brought me.