Series: Drawing Near (part 2)

Part 1 of the series is found here.

I thought for this series it would be best to break apart the events that have happened in our lives in order to better understand where we are headed. I want to start with last June (2009) because that is really where it all began to unravel.

My husband and I were blessed to be able to go to a big city with good friends to attend the annual conference for the association of schools to which Boy's school belongs. Actually - Boy's school is dear to us because we worked along with our best friends to start the school. I was researching homeschooling (because we just knew that we would not choose public education for our children) and our friends asked us to invest our time and energy in a new school that met the criteria we were all looking for. We worked together for around 18 months and opened our doors in 2008, just in time for Boy to start kindergarten.

I have known my husband for over half our lives. I have always thought he was well-suited for a career as a teacher. He loves learning, and he is passionate about passing along enthusiasm about history and literature to the next generation. At the conference, he finally gave in to what I have always known: he needed to be teaching in a school where great books were taught from a biblical worldview.

We came home and had many discussions about how to make this transition. He was working at the time in a nuclear power plant, but he wasn't happy at all with that career. He served in the military and had GI money available to use to pay for seminary. He applied and was accepted to begin in the fall - everything was falling into place.

In August, his lack of enthusiasm at his job in nuclear power resulted in consequences. He heard through the grapevine that he was strongly being considered for a lay-off. Since his heart was no longer in the job, he resigned. At the time he thought we could survive on GI money (including a housing allowance) and a couple of part-time jobs. It would require us to move into a home owned by my parents which is near the seminary, and that would require us to sell our home here.

I don't want this post to get too lengthy. Trust me when I say that even with the details I have shared so far - the story was much more involved than words can describe. There were many conversations, prayers, and interventions from our parents before he resigned his job. We honestly thought that God had called him to this new career, and that God would provide for our family in order to make it happen. We felt exuberant to be following what we believed was God's will for our life.

Enter reality: the house didn't sell, he couldn't find part-time jobs anywhere near his seminary, the government was behind on GI bill payouts so the housing money we were depending on didn't come (it finally came in January - 5 months after he began school). We were seeing doors slammed in our faces everywhere we turned. Needless to say I began to question whether or not this really was God's will or if we were just foolish like our parents had been saying.

Next post I will tell you what we had to do to keep our family afloat. And I'll tell you how it fits in with where God is now leading us.