Tuesday, May 13, 2014

And Now You Know the Rest of the Story..... (Part One)

Almost a month ago, we announced our move to Columbus. I promised you in this post the full story, but I had to wait until we actually knew the full story before I could tell it. As of last Thursday, the final piece of the puzzle finally fell into place, so I can finally tell you guys how this move of ours came about. Yippee!

Right before Thanksgiving 2013, Roman found a job announcement online for a forensic scientist job. (I won’t go into any further details on what the job is, just because I’m slightly leery about posting it for the world to see. So we’ll just say it’s a forensic scientist job, cool? Cool.) For those of you who don’t know, Roman majored in forensic science in college but had so far been unable to find a job in his field. So about three months after graduating college, he took a full-time job selling phones through a Verizon wireless retailer.

Trying to get a job in the forensic science community proved a lot more difficult than what we had expected. Going into marriage, we had a plan: graduate from college, Roman gets a job in his career field, I quit my job and be a stay-at-home mom, we live in Camilla and stay on the ministry team at our church, and everyone lives happily ever after. We graduated college in May of 2012, but nothing else from our plan was falling into place. We just weren’t getting anywhere with the few forensic science jobs that became available in the Camilla area.

So when Roman found the forensic scientist job this past November, we asked ourselves a scary question: What if God doesn’t want us to stay in Camilla? What if He wants us to move somewhere else? We decided that was a possibility but would never know unless he applied, so Roman submitted his application and we started praying really hard.

It was very strange, because the longer we prayed about it, the more at peace we felt about it. By the time Christmas rolled around, we were almost positive that God wanted us to move…which was really odd because Roman hadn’t even heard anything back yet! We even drove up there one Saturday and checked out the area where he would be working and some of the surrounding neighborhoods.

Sure enough, Roman got a phone call in January to set up an interview. We were ridiculously excited! This was the closest we had ever come in his career pursuit! I took the day off and we drove up to Columbus the night before. His interview went very well and as soon as I picked him up I blurted out, “We’re moving to Columbus!!” We spent the afternoon looking at houses and I immediately started applying for federal government jobs in the area. Within a few days, a job came up and I felt God telling me to apply.

February came with lots of great news: Roman had made it into the next stage of the hiring process. It was him and two other individuals, and he was now required to do the extensive background investigation and a polygraph. In addition, I was selected for an interview for the job that I had applied for the month before. I was nervous, but I felt God telling me that the job was already mine, so there was a lot of peace at the same time.

Up until February we were feeling nothing but excitement and confidence. As we explained to some of our family and friends: if this couple who always said they were never leaving Camilla are at peace with moving to Columbus, then that peace is only coming from God. We were really excited about the future and what God was doing. In the back of our minds, all the questions about the tiny details were still there…but they were small in comparison. Our feelings were mixed with nervousness, peace and excitement, but mostly peace and excitement. March changed all of that……

In early March, I got a tentative job offer. At first I was beyond excited, but reality quickly set in. Roman had not heard anything yet about his job. What do we do? I strongly felt like this was God saying that we were meant to move to Columbus even though Roman hadn’t heard anything yet, but I really did not want to be wrong and accept a job offer that I wasn’t supposed to take. I stalled as long as possible on my paperwork that I had to fill out before a firm job offer could be made. Then I stalled as long as possible on getting my background investigation and fingerprinting complete. But even after all that stalling, I got a phone call immediately after my fingerprints were taken with a firm job offer. I told the human resource specialist that I would need to talk to my husband and I’d call her back in the morning. Roman immediately called the human resource specialist and asked for a status on his job….they had none to offer him.

Our time of intense anxiety had begun.
 

Come back Thursday to hear the rest of the story!

“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.’” ~Jeremiah 29:11

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