July 27

      I had a job interview today.  It was completely nerve wrecking just in the fact that it all came about so fast and I haven’t done anything like this in nearly 10 years.  

     A little over a week ago a friend of mine mentioned that our local school district was hiring a lot of teachers this summer.  This was big news because they have been laying off teachers nearly every year since we moved to Oregon.  Last year I did the paperwork to get an Oregon teaching certificate so I could apply for the on-line school my kids attend, so I already had that piece in place.  I thought it was worth checking into since our family seems to be in a time of transition.  Could this be God opening a door for us?

      I checked for openings on the school website and sure enough there was a position open for a middle school science teacher not 3 miles from my house.  However the position was only accepting applications for the next 6 days.  I began working on the on-line application.  It took me over 8 hours to complete as there were 7 essay questions.  I submitted it and activated my prayer network.  They were asked to pray that I would only be offered the job if that is what God wants for my family.

      Two days later I got an email informing me that I was selected to interview for the position.  The interviews were scheduled for the following Monday.

      Whereas going back to work full-time will take a lot of financial strain off my family, there were several things that really concern me.  1) When I taught before it was all consuming, have I changed enough to be a more balanced person?  2) My kids attend school from home and are required to have a parent with them while they work.  How will this disrupt their schooling?  Is it possible for me to manage their school work  in the evenings after working all day or will we have to put them in a more traditional school?  3) I really don’t like many things about the Oregon educational system.  Can I work in it without offending my co-workers?  The main reason Oregonians don't like people from California is that the Californians are always saying things like, "In California we do it this way."  I can't imagine they would be any more receptive to me comparing everything to the way I did it in Texas.  

       I spent the weekend getting my portfolio ready and praying.  This is a huge step of faith for me.  Not just the interview but also trusting that if God gives me this job, He would have a plan for working out all the details that my going back to work would mess up for my family


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       The interview went pretty well but I didn’t walk away feeling confident.  Something was off, but I can’t figure out what it was.  It reminded me of being on an interview committee a few years ago.  We knew that we were going to hire the long-term substitute that had been working with us for 5 months, however the district required that we interview at least 3 people before they could make an offer.  Today the people were friendly but a few of them were very stand-offish, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that they were in the same position of having to do interviews when a decision had already been made.  We will see…

A few shots from my teaching days.

August 20

    I called the healthcare office today to see why they haven’t called us.  We got a letter on Aug. 6th saying that we qualified for Medicaid and that they would be calling to let us know all the details.  

    They have a pre-recorded message that basically says it will take 45 days to process applications after you have been qualified, so if it hasn’t been at least 45 days from your letter then don’t bother their customer service agents.  My kids loose their health coverage in 10 days and I shouldn’t bother your customer service people.  

     I am still struggling to understand how we can be declared eligible and our coverage begin on the date of the letter (August 6th) but they need another 45 days to process the paperwork and get us policy information.  Welcome to things run by the federal government.

     This has also lead me to consider the point, purpose and value of health insurance in general.  Once we are back on our feet, we will be paying over $1000/month for medical insurance and budgeting and other $150 for copays and prescriptions.  That is $13,800 per year.  I have a hard time believing that we would actually spend that in a normal year without insurance, but that is how they get you.  No one can be sure they will have a normal hospital free year, especially when you have 3 kids.  There are options with cheaper premiums but the deductibles are $10k to $16k, which completely defeats the purpose of insurance to begin with.  

Update (August 26th)- I refilled my 2 prescriptions last week so I would have them when our insurance coverage ended.  They came today and according to the papers with them the regular cost was over $1000.  These aren’t new medications but routine birth control and ADHD meds.  When you consider my oldest also has ADHD, my son has asthma and excema, two of us carry Epipens for severe allergies and we do occasionally get sick, maybe we would spend over $13,800 in a year without the insurance.

July 15

        My husband has resigned from his job.  He feels God calling him to train and mentor church planters and his current job won’t allow him the time he wants to spend on it.  The organization he works for has a branch that is dedicated to church planters and that is where he used to work.  However 4 years ago they needed someone innovative to take over a city ministry and asked him to do it.  Last January he meet with the president of the company and asked what it would take to go back to the church planting side of things and was told that it would be another 2-5 years before that would be possible.  At that point he felt like God released him from working with the company.  Now 6 months later, he has resigned.  

         The date he gave on the resignation letter was October 15th.  There is a big fundraising event for the city ministry on October 3rd and he wanted to see that through.  It will also give the company time to find a new city director and allow, them to train and have a very smooth transition.  Above all, my husband wants to leave with integrity making the transition as easy as possible for everyone.  Unfortunately, the director of human resources said that they only allow people to work 30 days from the resignation so we will have to see if they allow him to stay until October. 

          After his time at this job is done, we will become support raising ministers.  That is we will have to get a lot of people to believe in what we are doing enough to give us money each month for us to live and run the ministry.  When we first discussed this, nearly a year ago, the plan was to be completely out of debt and have 4-6 months of income in the bank before we made any transition.  It can take a long time to raise enough funding to be fully supported so we thought this was a solid plan.  I would love to say that it worked that way.

          There is an organization called Act Beyond that has agreed to a strategic partnership with my husband’s new ministry.  They are offering a grant that will support us up to $50,000 to give us time to raise support.  This is what gave him the confidence to resign before we had anything in place to help us through the transition.

Letting Go of the Basket

I am sure the first time I heard the story of baby Moses I was still in diapers.  It is just one of those stories that is told over and over again to kids in church.  It is an amazing story of how God took this little baby, who was supposed to be killed at birth and not only saved his life but allowed him to be raised in a palace by a real princess.  When he grew up he went on to do many more really cool things.  

A few of the times that I heard this story over the years, someone would mention Jochebed.  I bet that name doesn’t ring a bell for you though.  She was the mother Moses.  She gave birth to him.  She hid him.  She nursed him.  She put him a basket and let him go in the river.  Whenever she is brought up, it has always been in the context of how hard it must of been to hide an infant from the Egyptian soldiers or the wonderful way that God blessed her faithfulness by bringing her back into her son’s life as his wet nurse.  

The women’s group I am in is currently going through the study Seamless by Angie Smith.  First I have to say this is the hands down best study I have done in a really long time.  This morning though, Angie made me see this story in a whole new light.

This is a picture of my son at 3 months old.

 At 3 months of age babies start to settle into a routine and many start sleeping through the night or at least for longer stretches of it.  It is at this point that mothers start coming out of the fog that comes with child birth.  The baby starts to interact with you and reach for toys.  They smile. They laugh. They trust. It was at this point that Jochebad wrapped her son up, placed him in a basket, pushed him out into the river and watched the current carry him away from her.

Looking into the eyes of my son, I am not sure I would have been able to let go of that basket.

As you can probably tell, this story took on a whole new level of understanding for me today. But the truth is not many of us really worry about having to give up our infants.  We can consider how hard it was, then be really thankful that we were not living in those times.  But the point of this story is that if Jochebad hadn't trusted God enough to let go of that basket, Moses wouldn't have been in a position to lead the Israelites out of Egypt.  All of those cool Moses stories, the burning bush, the plagues, the passover, the parting of the Red Sea, leading the people to the Promised Land.... They all started with a mother's act of shear faith. God hadn't sent her an angel or a prophet to let her know it was all going to be alright. She just had to trust, with no guarantees or promises.

One reason this hit me so hard today, is because my life is extremely unsettled right now.  My husband is transitioning from a nice secure job with benefits to being a self-supported missionary.  God is asking me to trust Him on a much greater scale than I ever have and I am scared to death. I have a basket.  I have not been asked to place a child inside it, but it contains our financial security, all my hopes and dreams for myself and my children.  I feel as if I am sitting on the edge of the river and I just can't seem to let go.

I wonder if a year from now or five years from now, if my children will come visit me at this river.  They can come watch as I push this basket around in the reeds along the banks, my knuckles white from holding it so tightly.  While they are there I can teach them about God, about His amazing love and faithfulness, about His promises.  Then they will leave again and wonder if I truly believe all of that, then why won't I let go of the basket and come home with them.  

Type A

     I would be described by everyone who knows me as an extreme Type A personality.  According to Wikipedia, a Type A people are "ambitious, rigidly organized, highly status-conscious, sensitive, impatient, take on more than they can handle, want other people to get to the point, anxious, proactive, and concerned with time management. People with Type A personalities are often high-achieving "workaholics" who multi-task, push themselves with deadlines, and hate both delays and ambivalence."

    Unfortunately there isn't anything in the list I can really disagree with and most of them are complicated by my ADHD.  I have very rigid systems of organization, which I struggle to keep up with and maintain but that I can't seem to let go of either.  On one hand this is a great coping strategy for managing my ADHD but on the other it adds a lot of stress.  I HATE small talk.  If you have something to say then please say it quickly before my mind wanders off.  I LOVE to take a proactive approach to everything.  In college I typically had every assignment done within 2 weeks of the due date.  I want to know what's expected in time to plan and strategize so that I can meet or exceed the expectations.  You never know what is going to happen so putting things off is a recipe for disaster.  People with a laissez-faire attitude drive me up the wall.  Things don't just happen, even elementary kids know that to get an effect there must be a cause.  If you want a specific effect then you must plan and do specific things.

     The problem is that no matter how much structure I try to build into my life, no matter how much I plan.  There are things I cannot control.  Most of the time these are normal life things that I can work around, but sometimes they are major. They are over whelming and they decimate every plan, every structure, every backup system I have.  Without those things, I loose all sense of security and peace. During these times I have a hard time holding on.  I love the song Need You Now by Plumb, because it speaks to these times. Here are the lyrics for the second verse and chorus:

Standing on a road I didn't plan 

Wondering how I got to where I am 

I'm trying to hear that still small voice 

I'm trying to hear above the noise 

How many times have you heard me cry out 

"God please take this"? 

How many times have you given me strength to 

Just keep breathing? 

Oh I need you 

God, I need you now. 

     Sometimes the best thing we can do is to "Just keep breathing".  There is no way to plan your way out of some events or circumstances.  It is like a roller coaster, you just have to hold on and trust that eventually the ride will end.

Lonely but Never Alone

    I recently read a blog post by Momastery that detailed the day of a mother.  In it she used the phrase "Lonely but never alone" and it has clung to me.  I think it is a feeling most stay-at-home moms know well but I had never really articulated it.
    There have been many times when Paul would keep the kids so I could run errands by myself.  I really appreciated not having to drag the kids along on these trips but they nearly always left me feeling down and depressed.  Occasionally he will take all three kids out, so I can have some alone time.  Whereas the I always jump at the chance to get things done around the house without constantly being interrupted by a child, I typically end up in tears while they are gone.
     I think the problem is one of communication.  You read everywhere how mom's need time away from the kids, and this is often interpreted as needing "alone time".  For myself I think it would be more accurate to say I need "me time".  Time where the only thing I have to worry about is me.  Time where I can interact with adults and not discuss the kids or the house in any way.  Time to know that I still exist as a person and not just an unnoticed servant.
    Recently I have been considering returning to work.  I think a big part of this desire comes from wanting to have a purpose beyond my house.  To have tasks and goals that I can complete and not have to redo them tomorrow.  To speak with people who notice and appreciate what I do, at least some of the time.
     I know it is the end of the school year and things are always harder because no one has any motivation left.  Hopefully once summer arrives, I will be able to get out more and my attitude will once again see being alone with the kids as a blessing.  There is always hope because deep down I know this is just a season and will soon pass.

I Had a Plan

       I went to the doctor for my yearly examine and we were discussing my kids.  My daughter was 7 and my son was 4.  The doctor looked at me and said, "Are you done?  Because if you are done there are some more permanent options for birth control that we can look at."  I just stared at him with that question echoing around in my head.  "Are you done?"  I looked at him and responded, "I don't know."  He laughed and said that when I figured it out to let him know.
      That evening I told my husband about the appointment and the question.  He didn't have any better answer than I did.  It kind of surprised me that for someone who likes to have everything planned out I hadn't considered whether or not we would have more children.  In my heart, I had always wanted for but life gets complicated and we had two.  After much deliberation we decided to try for one more,  I just couldn't find any contentment in saying we were done.
     We had another daughter in January 2011, our son was 5 and our oldest daughter was 9.  Since there is a big age gap between the youngest and the older two, I thought that we might have a fourth.  However we moved to Oregon instead.  Now that she is 4 years old, I have become resigned to the idea that our family is done, at least from a biological stand point.  Having another baby at this point would just be starting over, the ages would be too far for them to really play together and my body is not what it used to be.
     After talking to my doctor, I scheduled an appointment for the essure procedure.  It is a simple procedure performed in the doctor's office, where springs are inserted into the fallopian tubes.  This causes the tubes to become permanently blocked resulting in sterilization.  It is by far the least complicated and easiest form of human sterilization.
     Yesterday my husband took off work so he could be with me (and drive) for the procedure.  We got to the office at 12:15 and had to pick up a Lorazapan and Hydrocodone from the pharmacy.  At the doctor's office they did a quick pregnancy test to ensure the doctor wouldn't run into any extremely unexpected during the procedure.  They gave me a shot of pain killer and I took the pills from the pharmacy.  Once those had kicked in they use Lidocaine to numb everything on the inside.  After 20 minutes of letting everything kick in, they took me back to the procedure room for the estimated 10 minute procedure.  My uterus was inflated with saline, which wasn't nearly as bad as it sounds probably because of all the drugs.  The scope was inserted and they quickly found both my tubes, clear and open.  The cool part was that we had a monitor and could watch the whole thing.  The doctor threaded the Essure devise in along side the scope and straight into the tube.  Well that was the plan.  As soon as the tip of the devise went into the tube, it clamped down.  I didn't realize how muscular these little tubes were.  They tried the other side, same result.  They pulled everything out and waited ten minutes and tried again.  Same result.  The second the little tip of the device entered the tube it clamped down.  Even with all the drugs I was on I could feel a strong cramp on whatever side they were working on.  They held the tip in the tube for several minutes hoping it would realize it was reacting to nothing, but apparently my tubes are smarter than that.  After 45 minutes of trying to coax these little tubes to cooperate, the procedure was stopped.
      The doctor would like for me to reschedule another attempt to see if my tubes would be more cooperative on another day.  I have my doubts.  However there is no other procedure that can be done in the doctors office and only has a one day recovery.  So the question is do we continue to pursue sterilization or just use contraceptives until nature takes care of the sterilization?  Maybe this is a sign from God that we are not done having children...  Although I really doubt that for a multitude of reasons: my age, my kids ages, finances, living arrangement, employment possibilities, ministry options.....
       In all of this I think the hardest thing for me was that I had a plan.  I spent years considering and months planning this appointment.  It was supposed to work.  I hadn't considered the possibility that it might not (there was a less than 5% chance of this happening).  I HAD A PLAN