Major Catch Up – Feb & March!

Wow! Life has changed a lot since my last post on February 6th! I guess I'll start there and work forward. The story starts sad and frustrating, but ends peaceful and secure. I know most of my friends and family already know this story, but some don't know the whole story. Besides, I post here so that I can document for myself the story.

Hercules Sadness

We had a Superbowl party around the beginning with February with a bunch of friends from church. We noticed that evening that Hercules was coughing or gagging. Herc seemed to do much better that week, but on the next Saturday night he got much worse. He was really breathing hard. By early Sunday morning, I knew that Herc wasn't okay and I called in an emergency visit to the vet. The vet said he had congestive heart failure. I had no choice but to have him put to sleep.

That was a sad, sad morning. Hercules was the perfect dog. We think he was a mix of dachshund and Jack Russell terrier. He had short hair and liked to sit on our laps when we got out a blanket. He was about 10 years old. He is very missed. 

Job Search

That same morning was a special service at church that Mike had been preparing for for weeks. They had taken questions from the congregation and had three guys from the church and the pastor prepare answers to share that morning. Mike was sad, but really wanted to participate. Even though he was sad and nervous, I have never seen him light up like he did that day. He loves to find answers to tough faith and Bible questions. He's been studying up on that for fun for the last year. He did a great job!

Work had been very miserable for Mike for the last five months at that time and finally that week, I threw up my hands and said, "Fine, let's look for another job!" I went first to the Montana State University site for some reason and stumbled upon one job that was perfect for Mike...and said, "Why don't you just apply for this one!?" I'm not sure what took me to that site first, but we had browsed around for jobs near Sedro-Woolley, but hadn't seen anything that would be fun or interesting. So we decided we should apply. 

A couple days later I was thinking about Mike's joy sharing at church and thought we should look into Apologetics jobs instead, but, of course, there aren't really any. However, I found a university ministry called Ratio Christi that you can set up on a secular campus that gets kids together to discuss these hard questions about God and faith. It wasn't something we would do as a job, but something we would do together to make a difference for those college age kids. We looked into what would be required to start such an organization. You have to have an official apologist to start it, but it just so happened that Mike already had the required credentials because he had earned a Certificate in Apologetics from Biola University with a distance program over last summer just for the "fun" of it.

So, with a perfect job description and a future ministry plan that would be perfect for Mike's talents in defending the faith, we thought maybe this could be God's plan for us. We agonized over it as Mike submitted his application and we waited weeks to hear back from Montana State University. 

In the Meantime...

I had a really busy weekend on Feb 17-19. On Saturday I went to a women's conference at a church in Bellingham with my girlfriends from church. That evening, I spent the night at the mall with my girl scout troop.

The next weekend, Mike and I went to an apologetics conference in Canada. We had been planning to go to it for months. Mike had gone the year before, but it was my first real exposure to it. I LOVED it! There were tons of really smart people that believe in God and could put their belief into words that made sense. I think by this time, we knew that Mike was going on to the next level in the job process and was scheduled for a phone interview.

The funny part of it was that I had asked God for some sort of sign that this job in Montana and the apologetic student organization was His plan for us. Then, at the Friday evening part of the conference the organizers gave away a prize to the people that were from the farthest away and guess what...they were from Bozeman, Montana! Who knows if that was really a sign from God, but it was a blessing and really helped me to find peace.

End of the Month

Mike's birthday was nothing special. He always tells me not to worry about it, so I don't. Then I feel guilty for not celebrating him. I made him a cake, but it wasn't even ready until the next day.

We started the process of having Mike's dad look at our house to see what would need to be fixed up if we were to have to put the house on the market and decided to start with residing one side of the house.

That was a fast paced, stressful, and anxious month as we waited to see what would happen with the job in Montana...but continued to deal with life in Sedro-Woolley as though nothing were changing. We didn't want to tell most folks about applying for the job because we didn't want Mike's work to be worried or upset that he was looking.

March

We then entered cookie sale season for Girl Scouts. We spent a lot of time at stores selling our cookies. It was fun, but exhausting at the same time. 

 

At some point in the month, Mike had his phone interview and then was eventually...after a two week wait...scheduled for an in-person interview in April over the girls' spring break...another 2 1/2 week wait.

Mike and I ran a relay race with some other friends from church. We had not been doing too great at keeping up our running through the stress, but the race was fun even though it was mostly uphill!

We had been having Youth Group at our house for the last couple months because it was such a small group. We enjoyed meeting with the kids on Monday evenings. 

Tegan decided it might be fun to go to the doctor, so she got her finger stuck in a big metal door latch at school that got shut on her finger. Ouch! She bled all over the school, but in the end, she didn't get stitches, but just got taped together. 

We celebrated George's 60th birthday in March. Heather had us over for dinner for what I think is my most favorite of all time flavor combination. She had "pork sundaes": layered shredded bbq pork, baked beans, spicy coleslaw, and bbq sauce on the top! So good! 

 

On March 29, I went with Anika's class on a fieldtrip to Western Washington University up in Bellingham. We had a good time on campus and it was confirmed that I would like to live in a university town.

 

Then it was on to Easter weekend and our road trip to Montana. I had organized our Sunday School for Easter morning and it was fun for the kids. Then we went to George and Debbie's after church for lunch and egg hunt. We were all packed up so we could leave directly after spending time with the family. 

 

Our little Zane looking for eggs.

 

 

 

 

To be continued...