For Myself

I actually posted this on Facebook on November 7, but wanted to record is here for myself.  To remind me how fortunate I am on those days when I feel like whining about my secondhand furniture or lack of nice wardrobe, instead of focusing on being grateful for the abundant ways in which I'm blessed.


I am tremendously grateful that my husband has gainful employment in his chosen profession. We arrived from California one year ago today. After spending 15 months trying to cobble together a living from savings, odd jobs, part time work, etc, and applying for nearly every job opening in Doug's profession in the Rocky Mountain and west coast states and a few midwest states--anywhere we even thou

ght we might be willing to move our family--and applying for a lot of jobs that were in some way sort of related to Doug's profession in those areas, and applying for $10-12/hr management jobs, and putting in applications at places like Lowe's, Sports Authority, etc, and not even hearing back from ANY of those places, and selling a lot of our possessions and uprooting our family to accept the help of others, we were struggling to stay optimistic about our future. Last spring Doug suddenly landed two interviews in a week, and the first one he went to led to a job offer, which led quickly to a promotion. I'm glad that we found this job, and that we found it here, in western Montana. For much of the time that we had little to no income, that was actually not even our primary trial--it was a tough couple of years and I will forever remain in debt to the many generous souls who saw us through some of the most difficult times in our adult lives. Thank you to the very best friends and families in the world. The thousands of acts of kindness that we have received have never gone unnoticed. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It still overwhelms me to even think about it. Our thoughts and prayers are with our many friends and family members who are still unemployed or underemployed. We think of you often.