I used to love that song...Alanis Morrissette, cool chic. Anyway, I sometimes find life to be this way!
- A few years ago, we uprooted and moved to the Denver area. I loved it...stayed home with the boys, actually worked out several times a week, and felt like when my husband came home from work that I too had put in a full day. We were satisfied, but missed the comforts of grandparents close by and family near. So, at our first opportunity...we moved back. Stayed with the same company until recently when they started shutting down branches and my smart husband saw it coming and found a new job. Within a week of this, they let everyone go at his branch but two people. Rumor has it, he may have stayed but would have been asked to move again.
- Upon moving back, I took my job back teaching in the public school. We were not sure the pay difference between the move and to be on the safe side (and the fact that I loved my job) I got it right back. The following school year, we decide that we can take a pay cut for me to join the ranks of the Christian school in our town. We were enrolling our boys anyway, and they had an opening in my area. Oddly enough, it was an opening created by the same lady leaving whose job I had previously taken in the public school.
- We had made an appointment late in the previous school year with my doctor to have my tubes tied. This may seem like too much information, but for the sake of documentation on my part I am going to continue. My husband is diabetic and takes a magnitude of medicines daily. We have scheduled him to have his wisdom teeth removed 4 different times and each one ends in a 'no go' due to sugar being high and potentials of healing time taking too long. Therefore, he was not and may never be a good candidate for the male equivalent of a tube tying. I had not been on a regular track since having our second boy, had tried 8 different types of birth control in a 2.5 year time frame, and after being 'normal' my entire life, my body was saying enough is enough! My appointment for pre-op was at the end of July, and I was told on the phone...well, you know the routine he (doc) will want you to phase off of the old pills to prepare for new ones or in this case the procedure. I had done this so many times, but this time...I had to call the nurse back two weeks before the appointment and ask her to change it to a 'oh my, we are having another one' appointment. We walk in and the doc says to my husband...Why are YOU here? Did you just want to come have an annual with her?? My husband replies, "Well, we got this card in the mail that says the third one is free!" After a few belly bumps and high fives (our doc is crazy and is the same one to have delivered both of the boys) we have been well on our way to a third...and guess what? It's also a boy!
- Did I mention that the job switch for my husband happened AFTER deciding I could take a huge pay cut and move to a new school where I sometimes feel like I am working to pay tuition and lunch tickets only? Well, it did and he also took a cut. At the same time, one of his all time dreams came true. The church asked him to LEAD a worship service...yes, he became a bi-vocational music minister. Our pay had once again evened out, I did not say exceeded limits or the college funds are once again busting at the seams. I said evened out. We can live and live comfortably.
- Oh, and did I mention that when I took my new job our old baby sitter was retiring? The only woman that had ever watched my two boys was done?? What was I going to do with a new baby? and What was I going to say to my new principal? Thanks for the job, but I am going to need from about March to May off work :) Well, the school has infant care for the staff at an amazingly low rate. So, if I continue to work (and I will pending all is well with baby and mom or no other changes occur) then me and 'my 3 sons' will all get up each morning next year and head to school together. A wonderful school with wonderful students and wonderful parent support and best of all the daily teachings from the Word.
- On a Denver note, our only friends that lived there just moved within 2 hours of us here and my precious little sister from here just moved to Denver one week ago. The Denver branch/headquarters of my husband's old work is rumored to be shutting down and they will leave the remaining braches open on a quarterly basis depending on productivity and profits. My brother-in-law who was our only family in Denver, just months after we moved back here sent his wife and daughter back here and they have been in the middle of a sticky divorce for these past few years...still not final.
Irony? No way...God has a plan and no one can write a better life story for you than He can. I thank Him daily for the blessings and watchful eye He provides for my family. My boys are awesome!!! Daddy included! We have learned a lot about family in the last few years. We have learned even more about Faith.
Proverbs 16:9In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps.
During this time of the year, I always think about Mary. I am quite sure she had a different 'plan' for she and Joseph. A little house on a hill somewhere, a few kiddos, maybe some livestock? She soon found out, just as my husband and I have, that she was not in charge. She would be given the ultimate gift, just as we have been given! Thank you Jesus...for without You nothing is possible!
