The Last 12 Months of Beck

I have been thinking about writing this post for awhile now in order to share with everyone the amazing journey that God has brought us through in the past 12 months. So here it goes! (Be prepared, it's long.)

It all started in spring of 2011. We were living in beautiful Durango, Colorado (God's country, I tell ya).  Basically, I loved it there. We had an amazing church, great friends, small town living and did I say how breathtaking Durango is?  However, housing is expensive, we have no family for over 700 miles and job opportunities were very limited for Rod.  About April or May, Rod approached me with the idea of moving back to California.  Besides the reasons listed above, he could see that there was no room for advancement in his current job.

 At first, I was very resistant to the idea.  When we left California the last time (when we moved to New Mexico at the end of 2006), we had been so excited about leaving.  Our whole purpose of taking the job in NM was to be closer to Durango and eventually work our way back there. (We lived there previously for a year early in our marriage.)  Why would I want to consider moving back to California again!  Rod encouraged us both to be praying about it, knowing that something needed to change.  Either the move needed to happen or housing and job opportunities in Durango needed to make themselves more clear.

So I did.  I really prayed about it for several weeks.  As you can guess, I did not want God's answer to be, "Yes, you need to make the move" but in the end that is what I knew he was telling us to do.  I had to come to the realization that Rod's reasons for wanting to move were more sensible than my reasons for wanting to stay.  That being said, I can't say that I was happy or excited about it.  I still wanted to stay in Durango and to this day if we felt God calling us back there I would go in a heartbeat.  But I did feel a peace about the decision.  I realized that sometimes God asks us to make difficult decisions not because we're excited about the outcome but because following where he leads will always be better than when I take control.

So with that decided, we started thinking through our moving scenarios.  We didn't want to leave Durango (aka, a job) before Rod had found one in California.  We owned a mobile home and were just about ready to put it on the market so there was also the thought of what to do if our home sold but there was still no new job.  To add to my stress, Amelia was starting kindergarten in the fall and my worst case scenario had her changing schools up to 4 times in her first year of school.  What to do, what to do?

Well, God decided not to leave us guessing so at the beginning of June Rod got laid off from his job.  As much as no one wants to lose a job, this made things immensely easier for us.  Rod worked non-stop on our house getting it ready to put on the market.  We set our move date for the beginning of July and quickly started packing.  We officially put our house on the market on June 14th doing a "For Sale by Owner".  Our plan was to try to sell it ourselves for the two last weeks we would be there and if nothing happened then we would turn the selling over to a real estate agent.  Selling a mobile home is actually a lot easier than selling a house because it is considered personal property not real property (but that's a lesson for another time).

By June 18th, we had an offer! (So, God, you really do want us to move, don't you?)  And by the end of the month our mobile home was sold and we had our money in hand.  The plan now was to head to California and stay with Rod's parents in the High Desert while Rod did his job hunting.  I think in both of our minds we thought that we would be with them for maybe 3-4 months and by the fall we would have our stuff back and be in our own place again.  God had made a lot of things clear to us by this point but obviously this was one thing he kept us in the dark about.

As soon as we got to California, Rod began job hunting aggressively.  He made tons of phone calls, followed every lead he had and literally knocked on every aviation door he could find.  His persistence paid off and in October he was offered a job with a charter jet company.  Seemed like our timeline was going along smoothly enough.  Then we started to understand the finer details of the job including the schedule of 10 days on, 5 days off and when a charter pilot is on it usually means they are gone away from home.  This was a little hard to swallow since his last job had him flying 2-3 days a week and even when he did fly he was usually home every night.  The second kicker was that he would have to pay for his own training to the tune of $11,000. (I wanted to share the amount with you not to say, "Look at the money we had!" but to show you how God works and what he can do when we are faithful.)

After praying about the job and the training, we decided that it would be the best thing to do.  It was a job, right?  And don't a lot of people spend that kind of money to go back to school in order to get the job they want?  The other thing was we did have the money in the bank.  Why?  Because we sold our mobile in Colorado and the money from the sale was sitting in the bank waiting for us to be ready to buy another house.  But there was another twist, how were we supposed to get our own place if the money we would need to buy was no longer available?

Rod finished his training in November and finally started flying (thus finally drawing a paycheck) in December.  We had decided to stay with his parents a few more months in order to put some extra into our savings and thus start to build back up what we had spent on training.  Here is where God once again reminded us that he was in charge.  In January, after working only 6 weeks, Rod was put on furlough because the plane he was flying was going in for a major maintenance overhaul.  Furlough is a fun word the aviation industry likes to use meaning "you're not being laid off, but since we don't have any work for you right now, we're just not going to pay you for awhile".  At this point we were very glad that we had not jumped into buying a house right away.

Then again, how were we supposed to be saving that extra money in order to buy a house if Rod was on furlough?  Well, enter our $8,700 tax return and a $5,000 inheritance from Rod's grandma who passed away in February and just like that we had back the money we spent on training.  Neither of these were expected.  We typically get back money from our taxes but this year's return was more than double what we've gotten back in previous years.  God is good!

As the middle of March rolled around Rod was back flying again and we were ready to start house hunting.  Like most places in California, prices are way down in the High Desert.  One of the downsides to staying in Durango had been that we could not afford a decent house.  Even a modest house that would have been the size our family needed was about $100,000 over what we could afford.  At the beginning of April we found a great house, put in an offer and went into escrow.  When the house was appraised, it came in $10,000 over what we're buying it for!

Fast-forward to today and we've closed on the house and are just waiting to move in at the end of the June!  All told, we will have been with Rod's parents almost a year.  Definitely not what we expected when we made the decision to move last summer.  Has it been challenging living in someone else's house for a year? Yes. But has God taken care of us through it all? Absolutely! We did not have to go into debt at all in the last year thanks to a few sacrifices on our part and a huge sacrifice by Rod's parents to allow us to invade their lives for a whole year.

I know this has been a long narrative but friends had encouraged me to write it all down so we wouldn't forget this journey we've been through.  As with any time in our lives, we know that God will continue to work.  Rod is gone a lot with this new job so we continue to pray for His guidance in that situation. My hope is that our story will encourage you in whatever you might be going through right now and know that God is always in control!

New House, New Snow

So we are finally moved in up in Durango and what a last two weeks it has been! We frantically packed the moving truck on Monday, November 30th and closed on our Bloomfield house. Tuesday afternoon we made the 45 minute drive to Durango, Colorado and unpacked into our "new" mobile home. On Wednesday, we made the drive to Bloomfield and back twice then finally got to settle down for a few days.

After closing on our new place that Friday, I guess the Lord really wanted us to stay put for a while because on Monday, December 7th it snowed for 24 hours straight and we got about 2 feet of snow. No going anywhere in the Saturn for several days! Then the next Sunday we got another 8 inches. Wow! Welcome to the mountains. Rod and I have been busy shoveling snow while still trying to unpack the house and remember that it's Christmas time. Caleb is trying to figure out why Mommy & Daddy are spending so much time outside.

Amelia loves the snow while Caleb is not so sure about it. He most just stands there and fusses while Amelia is rolling around like a penguin. You can see from this last picture why we wanted to move here. This is the view from our house!

Season of Change

Fall is in full swing here in New Mexico and we are getting ready for a lot of changes ourselves. So here's the latest news. We are in escrow to sell our house in Bloomfield and also in escrow to purchase a mobile home in Durango. Everything seems to be going smoothly and our move might actually take place the first week of December. That will be only two months after putting it on the market. In this economy, that has to be a God thing!

As that is all happening, we are counting down the days Rod has left with Mesa. The company has decided to shut down the flight school, officially in 6 months but it will more likely be around the end of this year. Praise God that he gave us the foresight to move now and reduce our expenses. That being said, Rod does have several job possibilities for flying in this area that look to be very promising. We know that God has to be in control otherwise we'd be freaking out right about now.

Other than that, we're good. Caleb runs everywhere and doesn't know what to do if his big sister is not available to play with. Amelia is learning to write her name and loves taking care of her stuffed animals and talking on her cell phone. I had some great pictures from our annual trip to the pumpkin patch but sadly they disappeared with the diaper bag so I'll have to indulge you with a few summer pictures.

House for Sale

So we have decided it is time to make the jump to Durango. Last week we put our house up for sale and are doing the work to sell it ourselves. You can check out our house info here. It will definitely be a challenge to sell a house in this economy but the market in our area is much better than the rest of the country. We have already had several calls about the house and have shown it twice. Most importantly we know that it will all happen in God's timing. If you know anyone in this area looking for a nice family home, please let them know about this one.

This process has been consuming most of our time and energy for the last several weeks. We had a big garage sale a few weekends back and were very successful in getting a lot of junk out of the house. Then we've been working on "staging" and depersonalizing the house as the Idiot's Guide to Selling Your Own Home suggests. It has been a lot of work but the house is finally the way we want it so now we just have to keep it maintained, which is easier said than done with two little ones running around. I'll post some recent pictures of the kids in the next week or so.