An Unexpected Chapter......

I have debated over the past several days if I was going to post about this or not. I didn't want it to be an "oh whoa is me" kinda post or a "whatever, good riddance"  or an "overly spiritual" one either. I finally decided that this is a major event in our lives, and this is what I blog about, major things that happen along with the simple everyday things so here it is. 

We are now among the ever growing percentage of people who are unemployed. And it sucks. Bad. It was totally and completely unexpected for us, however, as we look back over that past several weeks and even months, we can now see that a loving and caring Heavenly Father knew exactly what was about to happen and was already watching over us and blessing us long before we knew it. It has been little things like how about 6 months ago, after Patrick had been having a particularly hard time at work, I mentioned that maybe it was time for him to move on from this company. He said he didn't think it was, he had worked there too long (over 10 years!!) to just leave now. So we dismissed the thought and continued on with our lives.  It's bigger things like just 2 weeks before everything happened, we got a VERY unexpected check in the mail from our mortgage company for an overage in our escrow account and a letter telling us since our property taxes had gone down, our escrow amount we pay every month was going down, therefore, our mortgage payment was going down as well. We had just put that check into savings and were still wondering what we were going to spend it on. It's things like when everything went down, we thought that the company would just give us a final paycheck and be done with it. But they gave us options that usually they don't give people. And while having to choose which option was best for our family was hard because one of them meant moving back up to Utah to take a job there, we chose the option that kept us here where we feel so strongly that we are suppose to be, without a job, and waiting to see what will happen, and with enough money in the bank to sustain us for several months. 

Many will say that we are simply crazy for choosing the option that we did, to take a sort of "severance" and not take a job in such a horrible economy. And I would be lying if I said that thought hasn't crossed our minds either. It is incredibly scary to take that kind of chance. But as we thought and prayed and talked about it together, we just knew that it wasn't the time for our family to move back to Utah and that we had given all that we could to this company and it was time to move on and find a new road to travel on. And to those who think we are simply crazy or stupid for doing so, then to them I would say that we KNOW that the Lord is watching over us and has something in store for us. Where or when we will find out what that is, we don't know, but THIS is where He wants us right now and we are putting all the faith we can find in ourselves into HIM right now to guide us to what He wants us to do and a job that will sustain our family.

That doesn't mean this trial hasn't been hard so far. It doesn't mean that we haven't had bad days where the negative and stress haven't overwhelmed us. But it DOES mean that we know we will be ok and we can feel His loving arms around us giving us hope. 

Plans we thought we had set are now changed. So now what the future holds is uncertain.... and I'm not so sure that is such a terrible thing.