A Ship in Port is Safe…

Guest writer: Mommy

I recently stumbled upon this picture on the new up and coming networking site, Pinterest. I thought it is very appropriate for our life right now.

Lets go back about a year and half ago. Tory came home from work and told me that the group he worked for was going to be splitting and it didn’t look like it was going to be a very amicable separation. This was not the best timing since we had just found out we were expecting number three. Right after that evening was the historic day when we found out number three was being joined by number four. This was a source of great joy and excitement, but also a lot of stress considering my history with pregnancies.

Now the pregnancy was hard, but the split was even harder. Both of us were stressed out . . . a lot. I guess it didn’t help that we were experiencing surgery after hospitalization after surgery after hospitalization in our family. Yep, it was some hard times. But we stuck together and stuck it out.

Well this last year has been . . . challenging. (Now I say this smile, mind you.) But as other things have been getting easier, Tory’s job has still been a place of constant stress. The group he works for are great providers, the people he works with are great people, but trying to put things back together and bring organization back in this company has been hard on everyone involved. Tory found himself constantly struggling with giving his job everything it needed and his family (yep, we are that demanding of a group) everything we needed.

About eight months ago he came home and told me he was struggling. Now being the daughter of an engineer minded father, I told him if it was that big of problem he should try and find a solution that he felt good about (I know, I am so compassionate and sympathetic).

We decided to send out his resume to multiple different companies. We thought this would at least give him some freedom in knowing that there were other options. We also thought it would be good to practice some interviewing skills.  Most of the of the options were right here where we already live, but we did send one out to a company several hundred miles away just for kicks. Guess which one responded. That is right folks, the only one not here, the one hundreds of miles away.

We decided just to interview and when we prayed about it, all we got was this feeling to try. There was no blaring green light of “THIS IS THE JOB!” or flashing red light of “STOP RIGHT NOW!” there was just “try.” So forward we went.

We just kept trying and moving forward with the process waiting all along to get a red light at some point saying, “STOP RIGHT NOW!” but it never came. And at the end of October Tory was offered the job.

This has been probably the most difficult decision we have ever made. It is life altering beyond description. We have prayed about this decision intensely. Discussed pros and cons until we were crazy from discussing. And then we prayed some more. And the answer we get, “try.”

Now this is very difficult for me, and yes, I am “trying” but I also have moments of pure panic. During one of those pure panic moments, I got on Pinterest to get my mind off the million things I am supposed doing, and I saw the picture above. The quote really touched me. I like safety. I like dependability. I like consistency. But that is not what this life is for. As I read the message and looked at the picture, I felt like I was getting a special little message from Him. Especially since the place we are going to call home looks like this

So here is to an all new adventure in our life.

p.s. now you know why the blog has been neglected. it was better than neglecting the children.