Our 2019 year started off really well! Mark and I sat down and made some really great goals individually, as a couple and as a family. We made a lot of smaller specific goals to help us reach our bigger goals and we were really happy with how things were going.
Then...as life seems to go...we were thrown a curve ball. The week after New Years, Mark had a meeting with the CEO of the company that he works for. They discussed the clinic that Mark works at and the struggles that it has been experiencing. Mark was informed of the decision to make the pharmacy a telepharmacy and therefore his position would no longer be needed (as they would have another pharmacist from another clinic cover both pharmacies).
This was a huge, unexpected blow.
It was very discouraging and there was a lot of emotions to work through, for Mark especially. We will keep the bulk of those emotions private but we were both really sad about it and what it meant for our future.
For those that are unfamiliar with the area that we live in...it is rural. Very rural. There is really only one option for us to live here and for Mark to continue working and that was taken away from us. We knew we had to move (yet again) and find a new job.
There are some things we have experienced the last three weeks that I am fine forgetting. BUT there have also been some amazing growth experiences as well. We are not new to this situation as far as looking for employment and a place for our family to live...aka 2015.
2015 I can easily say was the hardest year of my life. I hit lows that year that I had never had before and luckily have never had to experience since. I don't really like to think of that year because I really don't like how I was that year. I was a giant bubble of negativity. Anger and then guilt about being angry pretty much sums up my feelings at the time.
As much as I don't like to think back on that time, it has been really amazing going through somethings similar (obviously, there are some differences but a lot is also the same) and see how much I have grown from that place. After Mark told me the news I almost immediately went to the Lord and He has been with us every. single. step. A big part of that is our willingness to just say "okay".
There are countless lessons I learned from 2015, but one big one was that there is no point in me asking or contemplating "WHY". I can ask and cry and say it's not fair all day long but at the end of the day, it's not going to change anything with our circumstances - all it is going to do is make me feel angry and defeated. And I don't think it's because our Heavenly Father doesn't want us to understand - He just knows that we can't understand now. I didn't understand a lot of the "whys" about 2015 but I'll tell you what, I understand them now. It wouldn't have made sense to me then but it does now. And I KNOW that someday I will understand why we are going through our present circumstance. I have zero doubt about it.
I didn't want to let myself go back to that dark place. And I am so grateful because I haven't. Instead of being filled with anger or bitterness I have been absolutely filled with faith. As time goes on, I find myself needing to pray for this more and more but I always feel filled with it when I ask. Again, I don't know how it will work out but I know that it will.
Even though I wouldn't wish this circumstance on us as a family (and especially on Mark) I am grateful to really see the growth that we have made and that we have really changed with how we deal with trials. I believe there is more that we are supposed to learn and I hope that we are doing that too.
It's amazing how our loving Father in Heaven puts things into our life to help us. The week we found out about all of this was also the week that we were studying about Elisabeth and Zachariah and finding out they were going to have a child (John the Baptist) and about Mary and Joseph finding out that they were going to have a child (Christ). I have thought of Elisabeth and Mary frequently through all of this. Neither of them questioned these amazing events that were happening in their lives. They accepted and moved forward with faith. They have given me a lot of faith and strength in all of this as well.
So, here we sit, three weeks later and our situation hasn't changed a lot. Mark has one more week at work and then we will begin a new path. We still don't know where that is taking us but we know that wherever it is - is where we are supposed to be right now.
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