Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Fitting together the pieces

In my last post I made a reference to seeing God's hand in all the decisions that have been made these past few months. Some folks may think I am flippantly assigning praise to God when really, it was just a matter of luck. I thought I would share just a few instances of what has transpired in the hopes of showing that not even I am lucky enough or good enough to conjure enough karma to explain the past few months.

1. In June, Mike and I made a last minute decision to drive to FL in the hopes that he could find a job or at least schedule an interview. A friend of my parents' happened to hear about our situation and passed Mike's name and resume on to someone he knows who recruits for IT jobs.

We arrived in Jacksonville on Sunday. By Wednesday, the recruiter had secured an interview with LPS. More importantly, she was able to schedule Mike for a face-to-face interview with the company despite LPS' protocol to conduct phone interviews before doing face-to-face interviews.

Mike spent the entire week in FL calling/emailing recruiters, applying to job openings he found online and even dropping by businesses in the hopes of at least meeting someone who would be willing to talk to him. It was all for naught. The only opening or hope for a job he encountered came through the work of this recruiter who was intro to Mike through a friend of my parents.

2. LPS finally offered Mike the job last week, with the stipulation that he had to be in Jax and ready to work by July 30. That gave us 2.5 weeks to pack, find a house, find an ob/gyn and take care of other details. My parents are real estate agents in Jacksonville and they had prepared us to anticipate rather bleak offerings for rental homes. Given that we needed a house that was under $1400/month, would allow dogs and would have enough space for all 6 of us, the outlook seemed grim. Within days, though, of being offered the job in Jax, my parents caught wind of a house that was being vacated not even a mile from their house. It offered plenty of space, a fenced in back yard and all the amenities we would need. Oh, and rent was $1300. We sent in our application and were approved to rent the house-despite the fact that 4 other families had already inquired about renting the home. When we received the lease we saw that the rent money is actually less than what we had been told.

3. I found a ob/gyn practice fairly quickly but was told my file would have to be reviewed by the drs there before they agreed to take me on as a patient. Thankfully I must have withstood scrutiny because they welcomed me to their practice and have even partnered me with a dr who is a mother to triplets.

4. Droves of friends have come by to help us pack and move boxes. We were worried about how we were going to empty our storage unit, bring boxes down from our attic and manage to pack our living space when Mike was still working full time and I was on restrictions. Thanks to many, many friends, most of the hard work has been done for us so that we most certainly will have everything ready to move by next week.

5. Mike's current job had asked him to work through the end of this week. He didn't want to - for various reasons - but felt he needed to cooperate with them so that they would cooperate with us when it came time to leave. But last week Mike couldn't help by vocalize his frustrations with some individuals who were making life very difficult for him. He never crossed any lines regarding respect or anger, but it was enough that HR considered firing him for his behavior. Thank GOD Mike has an amazing boss who stepped into the fray and persuaded HR to simply let Mike go home for the week and still get paid for the remainder of the week. Oh, and the company also agreed to pay Mike for unused PTO - something that is rarely done.

There have been many, many other smaller things that have transpired this past month that have clearly shown us God's intervention on our behalf. We are looking forward to this new chapter in our lives and are eager to see how God can use us to share His love in Jacksonville.


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