The Road to Here

In order to really understand our excitement, anticipation, and anxiety about our upcoming move, I think you need to understand where we've been for the last few years.  So allow me to fill you in.

In the spring of 2009 - a little over two years ago - Peter and I were balanced, productive members of society.  We both had full-time jobs, we owned a house and two cars, we went on vacations, and we bought new clothes and furniture and things when we wanted them.  We had a darling little two-year-old boy and I was pregnant with our second son.  Life was great, and we had a great Plan for the future.

Oh, yeah.  Things were looking good for us.

Peter had been accepted into nursing school at Chemeketa Community College in Salem, and our Plan was that he would cut back on his work hours when school started in the fall.  I would continue working full-time while he was in school.  My two kids would go to the same daycare that Solomon, my oldest son, had been going to since he was 12 weeks old.  Peter would graduate from nursing school in due time, get a job at the hospital in Salem, and life would proceed.

Me, about nine months preggers.  Gracious, I was huge.

It was a lovely Plan.  But one day as Peter and I were talking about our Plan - holding it in our hands and stroking it lovingly, admiring it and ourselves for having come up with it - we came to a Realization.  With two kids, we would be paying twice as much for daycare.  Most of the money I'd be making by working full time would go to paying someone to watch my kids so that I could work full time.  It was suddenly and undeniably clear to both of us that I needed to quit my job.  Our beautiful Plan died on the spot.


Of course we realized that it didn't make any financial sense for me to quit working.  Peter wasn't going to be working, and if I wasn't either, how were the bills going to be paid?  We had no answer for that question, but somehow we weren't too concerned about it.  We knew that we were doing the right thing.  It was the best decision I have ever made in my life.

Moments like these are worth being around for.

I was going to be staying home with my kids.  I was going to be just a mom and stop trying to be both a mom and everything else in the world at the same time.  Money would be practically nonexistent, but that didn't matter.  For the first time in my life, I truly felt that I was going to be fully living the life that God wanted me to live.  I would be living in harmony with His will, following His plan for me instead of my plan for me.  It felt so good, and it still does.

Good golly, they're cute.

So that is how we've been living for the last two years.  Nursing school was a time-claiming, life-consuming, soul-sucking experience and Peter only had time to work about one day a month.  He received student loans and scholarships.  Peter's parents helped us out enormously every month (for which we are eternally grateful and for which we love them dearly).  We're on food stamps and our kids are on public health care.  We have sold our possessions.  We have cut expenses.  We have made sacrifices, big and small.

Life has certainly been easier, but it has never been better.

Luckily, it's pretty cheap to entertain these guys.

And now that nursing school is over, we feel like we are at the finish line.  These last two hard years are past, and we can finally move into the next phase of God's plan for us - whatever that may be.