Learning to leave it up to God

It has been a hard year. A very LONG, hard year. Hazen has been unemployed since October 2008, 7 months now. He had a conditional job offer from Lewis and Clark County in June 2008 that we ended up missing out on due to waiting too long to ship a background packet added to the incompetence of someone in the US Postal Service. We spent some time angry about that, but it’s been a learning experience (background packets/applications are submitted VERY timely!!!) and I’ve learned to view it as it wasn’t meant to be.

The truth is that there have been some hard times in our marriage in the last year. I won’t elaborate because it’s not important, and because every marriage (every relationship, really) has its ups and downs. But the fact of it is that because he’s not working, we’ve come out of it better. It’s one of those instances where it doesn’t make sense when it’s happening, but later you can look back and realize “THIS is why that happened”. We wouldn’t be where we are now if he had gotten that job, and I’m grateful for that. Our marriage was the most important thing at that time and God saw that when we couldn’t.

Because Hazen isn’t working, I have to. We thought when I graduated that me going to work was the right thing, but it’s not. Having one of us home to parent our children is the right thing. But if Hazen had gotten that job, we would have gone straight into being a two income family, which could have been disastrous. We would have bought a house, put the kid in daycare, and gotten ourselves in a situation where me NOT working would not have been an option. But because Hazen is unemployed, we’ve learned to survive on one low paying job and unemployment. We are in a position where I CAN stop working when he gets hired and we CAN make ends meet, all while being good parents to our children. I know us; if that job had worked out, we would be living within our means, but living where we couldn’t lose any of our income. We’re not in that situation now.

It’s been disappointing to miss opportunities, don’t get me wrong. The first interview in Bozeman didn’t go well, and it really bummed Hazen out. I went into that interview 100% sure he would be getting an offer out of it, despite the 60 people that were going for 4 positions. Obviously that didn’t work out and it was upsetting then, but it’s been for the better. I’ve learned nothing is certain and we’ve been able to take the time to continue bettering our relationship and getting a better understanding of each other. It’s been fascinating switching roles and seeing how the other felt—he sees the difficulty in being a stay-at-home parent, and I see the difficulty of working. It’s obviously different in some ways since we tackle our new roles differently, but it has been eye-opening. And again, our marriage is better for it.

The Gallatin County interview, that was a little disappointing. There was 1 opening for the 65 that went up for it. Hazen was #2…he was told if they’d had another opening, it would have been his. It sucked that #2 wasn’t good enough, but in the same sense, his confidence has been improved. He now has applications in to Kalispell, Bozeman , and Missoula , and he will go into all of those interviews knowing that he IS good enough, that he IS what they’re looking for. So even though Gallatin County was a huge let-down as far as not getting the job, it was also a fantastic confidence builder and will give him the edge he needs for one of these other openings (we’re hoping for Bozeman—interview is May 27!).

I guess the reason for all of this is that I’m learning to let stuff go. We can’t control everything, no matter how hard we want to. By going through the difficulties of the last few months, we are going to appreciate when the good stuff comes. I can already appreciate what the hard stuff has done for our marriage and because I can now see that, I can understand that the job and family stuff will get better, too. It’s been enlightening to watch the “master plan” unfold, and there has been very little of it that has been by our choices or wishes…but they’ve turned out better than we had planned or hoped. We don’t have all the answers.

There has been so much that has changed in the year—we were completely stuck on wanting to be in Helena . Now we’ve spent some time in Bozeman and think that may be a better place for our family. If we hadn’t let go and decided to go for other opportunities, we wouldn’t know that. I feel that leaving Helena will be the best for us. We’ve done a lot of growing apart and coming together here; it’s time to move on and get to “real” life now. I think that leaving Helena will be a very cleansing experience for our family. And that’s what’s most important.