Following God

Well... some interesting things have been progressing around here. He has been with this company for four years and has tried to progress... he's applied to management training classes through the company-- all of which his area manager denied him. He had applied for a few management positions and didn't get any of them. Over time, this started to make Aaron just absolutely hate his job and really resent the people he worked for/with. I know that he took all of these set-backs really personally, but he had a really bad attitude about it. He wasn't open to following God... Aaron wanted what Aaron wanted and he didn't really care what God wanted him to do. I'm not bad-mouthing him; Aaron would tell you the exact same thing. In addition to his job situation, my condition (endometriosis) has gotten progressively worse despite that expensive surgery I had back in March. I was really upset and felt cheated about all of it. All of this is just background information though to set the tone for what happened next.

About three weeks ago, there was just a lot of really heavy stuff going on with us and we decided to just go somewhere and pray and think and talk about it. So, we ended up going to campus one night and we sat on a bench on the "mansion" lawn near Jerry Falwell's grave. I think I will always remember that night. It was very warm and humid, especially for the dark night. The sky was really clear and I could see all across Lynchburg from the elevation where we sat. Aaron prayed first. I could tell he was just really opening his heart and humbling himself. He just asked for God to change him into someone less "jerky and proud". I prayed next. I couldn't stop. I think I must have prayed for twenty minutes or longer. But this praying wasn't like, "Oh God, please get us out of this situation. Please heal me. Please let us be able to have kids. Please give Aaron a better job." No. This was not selfish praying. I just felt like... I was done "using" God. I remember feeling like so few things work out the way I want anyway, so why do I feel like I need to micromanage every aspect of my life? I was crying just about the whole time. We both just said, "God, wherever You lead, we'll follow obediently. We won't ask You to give us what we want. We won't ask You to show us the big picture. We'll follow, even when it's frightening not knowing what's coming next." I felt like a different person afterward and Aaron said he did, too.

Well, last week Aaron found out that his position at work will be phased down to part-time effective August 1, 2010. That really, really sucks. Fortunately, they'll allow him to keep his benefits, but obviously, we can't live on part-time income. Well, we're remarkably upbeat about this. We've been praying that we'll stay faithful and trust God. Maybe humility was the lesson Aaron needed to learn there. Now that he's learned that, God is moving him on to something else. On Saturday, I updated Aaron's Monster.com profile and uploaded his new resume (I can't do the accent marks on here...). By yesterday (two days later). He'd been contacted by two companies about interviews. Plus, he's still in the running for a possible position with another company-- a position that should be filled by July 19th. So, we're really excited. We're not going to lean one way or the other. We're just going to trust God.

On a completely different note... I decided to change up our kitchen a few weeks ago. I painted it blue one day when Aaron was at work (a Behr color called Harmonious). It looks great! :) I also decided to paint our cabinets white. I started that a few days ago. I scrubbed them down really good with Borax & bleach & then used oil based primer (which the guy in Home Depot's paint dept told me to do...) and the primer is peeling if i touch it with like the edge of my nails or something sharp.... So I really hope the paint seals it in good or else that guy at Home Depot caused me to destroy our kitchen... I think it will look really good once it's all done. I think. :) Nice and clean and open and bright.