Left and lost

I hear a lot about not being afraid to leave your comfort zone, about taking radical leaps of faith. Well, I tried to do that, and so far it has been entirely no picnic. I've been washed by doubts and fears, had difficulties thrown in at every turn, none of them severe enough to stop it from happening, just enough to make me sick and miserable. And I've seen no fruit from it whatsoever. I have no idea what I'm doing here, if I should have come, if or what I'm supposed to do. I receive absolutely zero consolations or guidance during prayer. And yet it's not as if there is anything really stopping us from being here, in fact that part just keep easily sailing along. The only part is I don't want to be here.

I have analyzed it up and down in so many ways, I'm not going to rehash it here. But I'm now faced with a decision to commit to not only the year I already contracted, but an additional year. So 5 months in, I have to decide about the next 20 months. The first 5 have been on a whole pretty difficult. I have even had to finally see a doctor about symptoms and get counseling for the stress. There are still so many things thst need doing to make life comfortable.

And that word comes out with a bad taste, but I invite you and the part of myself that hates the word to try this. See what it does to you to leave the life everyone says you should work for to come where you can barely communicate, hardly read, no one you work for really wants you or needs you around, though they keep requiring you to make a show of it by simply standing beside them for hours each day, saying nothing, doing nothing, but not able to do anything else more productive, and then trudge home on foot in the dark and increasing cold in a place where rain is literally the norm, to a house that has substandard everything, including literal mud walls and doors that don't seal without even the technology of a fire place to heat it. Where you keep getting sick from contact with kids and people who don't understand basic hygiene and think that keeping rooms at equal temp with the near freezing outside is healthy in some way. With a teen who really wanted to come but blames you for every instance that doesn't meet her expectations.

So what am I doing here? Am I in the wilderness on the way to the promised land? Am I drowning in the waves I tried to walk on? Did I just misinderstand everything? Am I Jonah in the whale right now, running from my purpose to find what I thought was better? I have prayed and prayed that I won't have to make these decisions any more. And yet here I am faced with another one. Anxiety attacks are becoming my norm as one after another challenge presents with no sign of abating. And tomorrow I am meeting someone who wants to try to convince me to stay. Which, if it were to work out, I estimate would cost me several thousand dollars more to accomplish.

If there's some thing I'm supposed to learn here, someone please tell me. If there's some direction I can't see, what is it? Because right now I can't stop counting the days until I can return to the place I have roots, which I also hate for other reasons, and pick up the pieces of a life, all the while doubting if some breakthrough isn't just around the bend.

I can't make this decision.