Random Thoughts from the Wilderness

It's been a while. I've been in the mysterious, otherwise unknown to me world of "working mommy-hood". I've just finished a five week journey as a chiropractor's assistant that was amazing. I was pleasantly surprised to really enjoy what I was doing and became very interested in the world of chiropractic. What I did not enjoy was getting home after 7 every night, having no energy at the end of the night to want to do anything as a wife/mother/housekeeper, and having someone else raise my children (no offense to the several members of my family who helped out, you were AWESOME). I have a whole new appreciation for the plight of the working mother. Especially if you HAVE to work and do not like your job, because my day went by quickly in enjoyment, but I was aware that if I didn't like my job I would be absolutely miserable being away from my children. However, my job was temporary. We knew this going in, although if I didn't have small children at home I would have stayed happily. I am thankful to God for the experience and the temporary paycheck!

John started about a month ago working for Lockheed Martin doing his part in building missiles of some sort. Big leap from preaching to missile building, but he is (THANK YOU JESUS!) enjoying it. No griping on this end, we went a month with no job, so it's nice having a paycheck coming in. Although I have to say, John is working his rear-end off, he works four 10's, Monday-Thursday, and then has been working overtime on Friday's and Saturday's as much as he can to get more hours. He is a temporary worker for the first three months (or a certain amount of hours) until his pay goes up and benefits kicks in, so he's volunteering for as much overtime as possible in order to get the hours over with.

I titled this "random thoughts from the wilderness" because that's how we're feeling right now. In the wilderness. I'm not necessarily complaining, just pontificating on the fact that John and I neither one can figure out what is going on in our life right now. We both feel like we're in the right place, we just don't know why. Not that it is always our business to know the "why" at this time and place, but still. We chose to leave Roseland and come here with a vision of what needed to be done, with goals that we felt were attainable with hard work and a little time, and we have not taken one step ahead on any of our goals. Our goals were to get a job and pay off debt, strengthen our marriage, our Spiritual foundation, our parenting skills and family time, generally to "get better" and prepare to go back on mission. It's been two months and if anything we have taken steps back in several of those areas. God blessed us with a job that pays our bills, but that is literally it. We pay our bills with NOTHING in the end to start paying off debt, and the knowledge that several more bills are about to start rolling in (benefits are good, but we still will have to pay for some of it, and taxes always kicks us in the butt), so we know it's not only about to get tight, but virtually impossible. We've both gained weight since getting here, we spend NO time together at all (see above work schedule), and it stresses us as parents.

"Man makes his plans, but the Lord directs his steps." This is definately becoming real to me on a daily basis here. I mean, come on. We're 33, with two kids, we're living like we're 22, not like middle-aged adults who should be in a different place by now. It's confusing, but interesting to watch. Just keep trusting. Just keep trusting. I keep telling myself this...