I'm going back to work.

Let me give a little background here, because I've never written about how we got to Louisville and how I came to be a stay at home mom.

Blake and I got married in August 2003 after I finished coursework for my master's degree. We moved to Richmond, KY, and I worked at a job not worth mentioning for 6 months, then I got a job at Berea College as a writer in their Development department. I loved that job, I really did. We bought a house in Berea and settled in. When I got pregnant with Nate, I had no intention of quitting work. I'd never even given thought to being a stay at home mom. Even after we got Nate's diagnosis, and I went to Nashville for 3 months for the MOMS study, I always intended to go back to work, and I did when Nate was 3 months old in the fall of 2006. We had excellent child care there, and everything was going fine. But he was sick a lot that winter, and in January, he was hospitalized for a week with RSV. Also, I wasn't happy with his physical therapy and felt like there was never enough time for me to work with him on something so important. All of a sudden, work wasn't quite so accomodating to all the sick time I was using, and I started feeling weirdly restless.

One evening I was at Walmart strolling through the book aisle and found a book about how to enjoy being an at home mom. I have no idea why I bought it, but I read the whole book that night and felt God dealing with me. Blake called me on his way home from work, and I said, "I think God wants me to quit my job." Well, what do you say to that? Nothing. There is nothing to say to that. You just have to do it. It's not that I think God wants all moms, or even all special needs moms, to stay at home. But for some reason, he wanted me to stay at home. And it's not like we could actually afford to live on one income. It was not easy. Blake took a second job so that we could pay off some bills, and I combed through every expense we had to see what we could cut. After a couple months, I left my job, and we just trusted that God would be faithful to us if we were faithful to him.

About seven months later, Blake was laid off from his day job as a mortgage loan officer at Countrywide. They closed the whole office down. But they did offer to transfer him to a different office in Knoxville, TN. It promised bigger pay, and he could finally quit his second job waiting tables (which he had done all that time despite hating it, bless his heart). So we prayed about it and put our house up for sale. For six months, Blake commuted 2 hours each way to Knoxville, before we finally sold our house and moved to Tennessee. We tried to get out of it several times, but God was insistent that we move to Knoxville. Fine. Except that no sooner did we get down there and get unpacked, that office closed too and Blake was laid off again! Well, now what? Blake applied and interviewed for some jobs in Knoxville and in Lexington, and nothing was working out. One day his mom suggested looking for something in Louisville, so he went right home and looked online for jobs, applied for one, and within minutes, he got a call about it! The next day he interviewed, and he was hired! I have to tell you, we sometimes still scratch our heads about why God wanted us to move to Knoxville for two months, but I know there was a reason!

So we moved to Louisville in August 2008. I actually was not all that happy about it and didn't think I'd like Louisville, but hey, you go where the job is. The only thing I was excited about was being closer to our families and the Spina Bifida Association of Kentucky. I had tried to get involved with them when living in Berea, but the distance made it difficult. Well, I soon started to love Louisville! We found wonderful therapists for Nate, a great church, there was so much to do, we really like our house ... it feels like home. By Christmas we were pregnant with Georgia, and though it was still difficult living on one (commission=unstable) income, we still felt like God wanted me to be at home so I planned to delay going back to work until Georgia went to preschool at age 3.

Last summer, I finished my thesis, Nate started walking, and I had Georgia all within a couple of months. I was so happy about each of those things, just on top of the world at accomplishing all these things we had worked so hard for. So I was surprised when I started feeling that restless feeling again ... like I didn't know what I was supposed to work toward next. I thought it was just post-baby hormonal stuff, then I thought I was just getting burnt out and just needed some help, then I blamed it on the zoloft. :) I prayed about it, asking God to help me really enjoy staying at home again. I know it's a hard job, and I also know the rewards, but I couldn't shake that restless feeling.

Last Thursday, I got a call from Jennifer, the program coordinator at the SBAK. She told me she was leaving her position for a job closer to her home that wouldn't require her to have such a long commute. We've gotten to know and love her in her 18 months at that job, so I was very sad that she wouldn't be such a part of our lives anymore. But as we were talking, God was saying "HEY!!! HEY, YOU! APPLY FOR THAT JOB!!!" (He doesn't yell at you? Maybe he knows he needs to yell for me to hear him.) I talked to Patty, the director, on Monday, had an official interview on Wednesday, and accepted the position on Friday. Wow.

I can read the job description for this position and look back over the last few years and see how God has been preparing me for all aspects of it. I wasn't ready 3 years ago. He gave me the experience of working in a nonprofit (Berea College) in fundraising. He let me experience all the emotions that go along with having a child with SB. He gave me a message board full of SB mommies to attend to. He let me go through all the frustrations of medicaid to figure out how to do it so I could share it with others. He gave me my professional project about helping doctors deliver the diagnosis. And I'm convinced that one of the reasons for all that was to prepare me for this job. Oh, and get this--part of the job will be blogging and facebooking for the SBAK. Dude, is this job not tailor-made for me? How awesome is our God?

Not staying at home anymore is going to be bittersweet. I think this job is right where I need to be and that I'm doing the right thing. Although being with the kids 24-7 drives me crazy sometimes, I'm going to seriously miss them while I'm at work. (It took me 2 minutes to write that last short sentence because of one child or the other crying or requesting something.) Overall I'm very, very excited about going back to work and about the job in particular.

I have to line up childcare. Right now we're thinking that Blake will stay home in the mornings (part-time stay at home dad!), then someone will come to our house to watch the kids in the afternoon until I get home. That "someone" is the question. We're looking into several options, but if someone reading this knows someone, let me know. There's lots of do, like shopping for work clothes and figuring out what to do about therapy. But I know it's all going to work out because that's how God works!