On Friday we signed a lease for a new place to live. We’ll be moving soon, a process that has been a long and winding road. Here’s the story of how it happened. Read Part One here and Part Two here.
We’ve missed a lot of holidays, birthdays and family events since we moved to Pennsylvania five years ago. But this was the first time we’d ever missed Christmas. Phil’s new job, at a restaurant near a shopping outlet, meant holiday hours for everyone and no time off. So, we scheduled our visit to Illinois in early January, after the holidays.
Around the same time, I learned that the second interview I’d been waiting for wasn’t going to come.
Talk about a blue Christmas.
We spent Christmas Day with friends who made us feel like family, and on New Year’s Eve, we drove all night to be in Illinois for the start of 2013.
Two weeks at home soothed our spirits and at the same time stirred our longing for resolution. It was hard to leave our hometown when we felt we had nothing going for us back in Pennsylvania.
I’m not much a fan of winter anyway, and I wasn’t looking forward to the dark, cold months ahead.
“Nothing was changing” became in my mind “Nothing is ever going to change.”
I was losing hope.
Losing faith.
My words were seasoned with bitter herbs as I talked about our life. I cried a lot. And for a while, I turned my back on God.
I wanted to fix our life. To make it all work out. But I didn’t have the first clue how, or even what was broken, if anything.
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Our daughter turned 5 in March and everyone started asking her about school in the fall.
School. That was the deadline in my mind. I needed us to be settled somewhere before then because kindergarten was going to be a big change for all of us, not just her.
God could do that for us, right? I held out faint hope.
Around this time, another job opened up at the place I’d applied at in the fall. We still weren’t making ends meet and even though I didn’t know how we’d swing daycare and two work schedules, I applied again.
And still heard nothing.
Was God even still interested in us?