Open Letter to God

Dear God,

Hi! It’s me, Megan Anne. OK so since I got laid off in 2020, You’ve refused to let me get another job. I’ve tried! I had sure bets! Pero no, nada. When I got divorced in 2015, You immediately gave me another job. At a very racist place and I was fired after my probationary period, but hey. I learned about “curry clauses” and apartment staging so that was cool.

Then I took a minute to finish writing Crescent City Snow in 2016 for University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Fun fact: The book is at The Culinary Institute of America’s library! So cool! I also went back to Dillard University to finally finish my undergraduate coursework, and graduated in 2017 at what would’ve been my 10-year reunion!

Back to School Again, on the Opposite Side of the Desk

I was more than ready to go back to work, and education was what I’d wanted to do since childhood so that was perfect. But it wasn’t at all sustainable, I used to be getting to work before sunup, falling asleep in traffic, falling asleep on my toddler and waking up to him in the rocking chair having fed himself Goldfish and chocolate milk. Dropped out of my University of New Orleans Creative Writing Workshop MFA and left that particular school in fall 2017. (That school is under completely new management.)

So then I got to teach high school English part time and it was lovely. Lovely! Until a Dangerous Minds type came and ruined the whole fabric of the campus. The wonderful person who brought me on was fired. A lot of messy mess. I left, in summer 2018, after the Dangerous Minds lady called me a “bitch” in front my students. (That particular campus has closed, with mostly everyone there being fired.

Immediately I went to another school on a part time basis as a reading interventionist, but the day I came for my interview, my cousin, who’d been there forever (like her mom), was fired. I didn’t know til after I signed my paperwork. The school was in a temporary location and I felt like a little lost mama duck with students trailing behind me, just trying to find a classroom to teach them. And one of the principals I knew there left, also my direct boss. I left on good terms, while driving back from Houston to New Orleans. I probably called in just outside Lafayette lol. (That particular school is doing amazing and if I ever wanted to get back into an elementary or middle school setting, that’s exactly where I’d go.)

School Schedules Don’t Mix with Single Parenting

Quickly let’s go back to May 4, 2018 celebrating my 35th birthday at Casa Honduras, the night my mom’s best friend gave me my mom’s journals! She said, “Your The New York Times bestseller is in here.” She had no clue I was already planning to write a book of short stories about my mom’s life! I scheduled coffee with my friendTor Maurice Carlos Ruffin and told him my plan and he said yes!

And in March 2019 I applied for the Jack Jones Literary Arts retreat fellowship and in May 2019 I learned I got in! Super hard to get into, a 3% acceptance rate. The same day I got the news that I was awarded the fellowship, I got an email from Jocelina Joiner saying she wanted to interview me for a news editor job at Nexstar Media Group/Lakana! AND I also learned I won an all-inclusive Secrets Resorts and Copa Airlines vacation for two from Young Leadership Council! May 22, 2019 was the best day of my life!

Then came the retreat in October. Jesus. Trau-ma-tic. Then on my late mom’s birthday, November 15, I learned Nexstar was eliminating the whole editing department. (Oddly enough, I had a dream about it the night before, so I knew what the “team meeting” was before my supervisor said it.) Thankfully since I was an overnight editor, I could stay til April 30, 2020. That was my 35th birthday, amid all the early intense COVID stuff, when I was supposed to be in Punta Cana.

It’s Been Five Years of You Hitting Me in the Head, God.

Now here we are in 2025. I’m almost 40. It’s been five years since I was laid off and I’ve found nothing. Not for lack of trying! Not for lack of talent! Not for lack of experience! God, why have You stopped giving me jobs? The money comes, somehow, and I’m thankful. But it’s very little money, and I know You know that. Not tryna question You, not tryna complain. I’m just saying what I know You see.

I feel so strongly like all You want me to do, is focus on writing this book.

So I’m asking You to do me a favor please. This is not an ultimatum, it’s just asking for something I need so that I can do what I believe is in Your will. (You made me this way, You know how I get.) If You really really want me to sit down and only focus on my mom’s memoir, please give me enough money to pay my bills for three months. All my bills. On time. In full. That’s $6,657. Stranger things have happened!

If You want me to solely work on my mom’s memoir (which includes a teeny bit of writing on my website, my newsletter), please send me this. Because you know it’s this feeling of worry, this lack that scares me. Even though You’ve never failed me! I’ll even take it in installments, Lord.

In fact, I’ll make a Google Sheet now, documenting every dime I make or somehow get, so that in three months I can share my testimony with the rest of Your flock, and with non-believers too. I trust You. If You could please get the $2,697 to me within a week I’d be so thankful. I trust that if You want me to do this, You will ease this financial burden.

Since I have complete faith in You, I’m basically doing a trust fall into Your arms. I’m going to focus solely on my mom’s memoir even before I see the $2,697, before I see the $6,657. I’m writing my Infatuation piece later today and that’s that pretty much, and then mom’s book and nothing else.

Excited to watch this all unfold! I never ever know how it works, but it always does in the most unusual ways. Thank You so much for everything, as always. You’re the best Dad ever! (Obvi.)

Love always,

Megan