Some Big News: We're Moving Back to Ohio!

Prepare yourself. There are lots of changes coming, and I don't have much time to spare as they are coming at warp speed, so let me give you the narrative nitty-gritty:

We are moving to Ohio.

It's the state I was born and raised in and where almost all of my family resides. It's the state I ran to when things got hard with Claire. My husband and I had always talked about moving there "someday," but didn't expect that to come to fruition anytime soon. 

Then, a couple of months ago, my husband got an email about an open position in Ohio. It was when Claire was just weeks old, but even then I'd already realized how hard motherhood is. Too hard for me to do it on my own. So when he told me about the opening, I did something I've never done: I practically demanded that he apply. I told him he didn't have to accept it but he had to apply—for my sake.

So, the loving husband that he is, he did apply, as did 230 other people. For one single opening. We knew it was a long shot, but decided to follow it through anyway and see what would happen.

From the very beginning, though, I prayed that if he wasn't going to get the job, I wanted him to get cut early on. And yet, he kept advancing.

He'd made it to the second or third round of interviews (which meant two or three more 8-hour trips back and forth to Ohio, with Claire in tow) when I submitted that same prayer to God again: That if he wasn't going to get the job, that he would not advance. It was the middle of the night when I lay awake praying that. Then it dawned on me: I must believe that God actually was answering my prayers. Because he continued to get advanced, I had to believe he's going to get the job!

Getting the job would mean we'd have to move, which would mean we'd have to sell our house. So the next morning I began doing a bunch of projects around the house that I'd always wanted to do (and that would really help our house sell) but had never gotten around to.

When my husband asked where my newfound motivation came from, I told him my epiphany: "I have to trust that God is going to give you the job."

Later, my husband told me that it was a bold statement, but I honestly believed it with all my heart. Working on those projects was a reflection of deciding to put my trust in God's faithfulness to me. Because God has proved he is faithful to me, time and time again. And, I told myself, even if my husband didn't get the job, all the work I was doing was for things I would have wanted to do anyway, so no effort would go to waste.

Meanwhile, at the end of June, after they had whittled the candidates down through round after round, my husband got the call that he was their number one pick—confirming that belief God had planted in my heart that late night weeks earlier.

The next step of the process came with having to sell our house. We were quite nervous about this, because we've only lived here for a year and a half and have put quite a bit of work into it and we weren't sure we'd be able to recoup it.

Again, though, I turned to the Lord, trusting him to finish what he had started.

Wouldn't you know it, but we hired a realtor who put a sign in our yard as he was leaving the driveway, and within three days (before the house even was officially on the market), we had an offer for $100 above our asking price.

And then, last week, my husband got the official offer of employment.

Oh, Lord, you are too good to me. You do take care of your children.

So, we are in the midst of boxing up our belongings again, making arrangements for our cross-country move. Which means things might be a little quiet around here while I throw myself into all this (and finding the time to entertain Claire in the middle of it all!). But I will be back, to share more of what God is doing in all this. May he be praised.

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