My New Life Adventure

Really, it's more of my husband's life adventure. This is how it started a year ago:

We were saving up money and looking at houses. House prices were low, and we got an invitation in the mail for an informational meeting about home loans. We went to the meeting, and said, dude, we should look at houses. So we looked around, found one house that interested us, looked at it with a realtor, got pre-approved for a loan, and didn't buy it. There weren't any other houses that we liked, so we stopped looking.

After several months, we both realized that we weren't supposed to buy a house at that time, but it had been extremely educational to go through the process of almost buying a house. Now we knew much more about what it took to make it happen, where as before we had known nothing. And gradually, we both began realizing that buying a house wasn't actually one of our highest priorities. There were so many positive things about continuing to rent.

So that left us wondering what we were going to do with all the money we saved up as our "house money."

Well, not too long after, my husband began thinking about the possibilities for his career. He likes being an electrician, but he didn't want to keep working in the construction industry for his entire life. So he started thinking and looking at the possibilities. He felt like he needed to change what he was doing some time in the near future. I began getting ready, getting excited, and getting anxious for a time of transition in our life: the possibility of new jobs, new town, new home, anything.

Then my husband realized a few months ago that he was really hating his job. It was making him downright miserable at times. He started seriously contemplating leaving his job and looking for something else. He thought and prayed and spent a lot of time listening. And he clearly heard God tell him that it was okay to leave, it was time to leave, he didn't have to stay at his job. But he kept praying about it, thinking about, didn't want to act rashly. And he still got the same message over again: it's time to leave. So he put in his two weeks notice at work and started looking at job postings online.

After looking at job postings for several days, it became clear that there were very few jobs available for people with his license, and the few openings that were potentials were in Portland, which is the last place either of us wants to work or live. But this really didn't get either of us down because God had made it clear that he was supposed to quit, so there had to be something else waiting for us in the right time and the right place. So my husband started thinking, praying, and listening again. And he realized that he wants to go to college. He felt confident that this was God's idea and not his own because my husband hates school. He already did college once, and it was not fun. But he was feeling this urge, this drive, this ambition to do it, to go to a university and get a bachelor's degree. He kept thinking and it kept feeling right.

This past Friday, my husband and I talked to an admissions counselor at Western Oregon University about enrolling for spring term and majoring in Information Systems, minoring in Computer Science. He has only a few weeks to get all the proper paperwork, applications and such ready to be able to start school on March 28th. It's a good thing he doesn't have a job because otherwise there's no way he'd have the time to get everything ready and done.

So, we found a way to use some of our "house money." We still have to wait and see how we're going to pay our bills while he's going to school, but we're really not worried about it. God keeps giving us answers, keeps showing us the next step on the path. So we'll see later on how the bills are going to get paid for the next two years.

What an adventure!