Where Were We...

As I mentioned previously I was blogging at a different address until this past summer and then had to stop for awhile because of time constraints and other things.

So where have we been?

Well, as of last update this was our story. I was a Catholic mom married to a Protestant pastor, we had moved a bunch, had 3 kids and adopted another. We had a beautiful house and I mostly blogged about house projects and family updates and homeschool stuff. Life was not bad.

Then my husband lost his job. Well, technically he resigned his job, but it was a forced resignation because of his church downsizing from two full-time pastors to one plus a part-time, lay youth minister. I'm not gonna lie, we didn't want to leave in that way exactly and it hurt. I lost a lot of friends over the whole affair. my husband lost his income and his calling.

I also can't say it wasn't a relief.

We took the opportunity to allow my husband to enter a period of serious discernment. He felt like the church his parents had so faithfully raised him in didn't exist anymore. The denomination was splintering under the weight of personal convictions and majority vote. And personally my husband needed to figure out where his theological beliefs lay.

The first order of business, logically, was to find a job outside of ministry. Easy enough for an educated, hard-working, and motivated guy, right?

Apparently not!

Exactly 18 months, one house sale, one cross-country move, and a new baby later he finally has a job!

I can't even count the number of resumes (over 100 by far), phone interviews, and in-person interviews he had in that time. Even second or third interviews, only to have the other guy be chosen for the job time and time again.

So frustrating!

But now we're slowly emerging out on the other side! A good, professional job has been secured. It's entry-level and doesn't pay as much as we need long-term but it'll be a stable income with benefits. Our hope is that I can continue working part-time after we get settled in our new state. Because yes, we're moving again....yay!

::sigh::

This will be a good move, I'm sure of it, and the current move really did open up some opportunities for us and led directly to this job in another state actually.

I have more details to fill in on our time away, including our newest little family member, but I'll save that for later :)

A Fresh Start

Hello there,

If you remember me from my old blog, welcome! If you're new, that's cool too! It's been 6+ months since I stopped blogging because of various things, including, but not limited to: my e-mail account being hacked, a need for more privacy because of someone harassing me, and the fact that I had a baby and was working.

Needless to say, I was busy!

But, I've missed blogging terribly. I'm not even sure I could pinpoint exactly why... I just have. My best guess is that I miss the writing, the sharing, the creativity, and the ability to keep a long-term, if sporadic, record of our lives.

Raising kids can be a fairly individual and hidden task. As Kathleen Norris describes in her book The Quotidian Mysteries, when we work in secret at difficult and worthwhile things a kind of melancholy, or acedia, can set in. Writing and sharing about this hidden life of laundry and learning and liturgy somehow helps to keep the acedia at bay. It allows me to reflect and gain perspective. It allows me to participate in a kind of community of other mothers doing the same thing. And it allows me to craft a vision for what I'm doing here at home raising and educating my children with my husband.

I will be using pseudo-names for my children and my own personal nickname here because I don't care to have their names become google-able. It's s shame because I do love their given names, but of course I need to respect their privacy and balance my love of openness and, dare I say....over-sharing??....with a long-term view. And I hate my own name anyway, so no fuss no muss shortening that one up for ya as I do with some friends!

I'll be updating soon with updating you on where we left off and where my family and I have been since I stopped recording stuff on the internet. In the meantime, I just wanted to say Welcome!