this is my first post. actually it’s the first of the new blog. I’ve tried this several times over the years, only to start and stop numerous times. it goes back to the early 2000’s I think. hard to remember at this point.

so here I am again. reinventing. I feel like every ten years God knocks me in the head and gives me a wake up call. the one repeated thing is that I feel like each time I had this ah ha moment. ‘God wants me to do something’. something different. something else. so I would say ok, now I’m going to do something about all this. and then I would walk away and do nothing.

in 2007 I lost my job in Connecticut. our kids were going to school in central pa and we had family in northern Virginia. we had a house and a mortgage and jobs were scarce in ct at the time, so we looked at norther va. I landed a job that allowed us to move there. not me, but God. so we moved so that I could have this brand new job. excitement kicked in. it was a major company and I thought I had landed the big one. well, fast forward a few years (months really) and it all came crashing down around me. the job wasn’t very good. the company wasn’t run well. our living arrangements were strained. our marriage was suffering. we couldn’t sell our house in ct so we ended up paying rent in Northern Virginia and a mortgage on a house we didn’t live in located in ct. we didn’t want to be landlords from 7 hours away, and we didn’t have the money to pay a local property manager in ct. we ended up losing the house. we got less that what we paid for it, but at least we didn’t have that burden any more.

it was the house that we thought we would retire in. the house we thought the kids would come back to after graduating from college. not to be.

so I settled into the stress of a new job and the difficulties of navigating around northern Virginia. if you every lived there, you know what I mean. life was going well for a time. we were having fun. we were close to family. our kids were a couple hours away instead of seven hours away. the job itself was less than satisfying, but as they say ‘at least I had a job’.

the economy tanked. and so did my job. laid off again, this time in 2016. it took a year to get back to work. a year that God supported us yet again. family stepped up and helped as well. I had a year to get myself together and learn new skills. I had the opportunity to start something new on my own. I started off strong. learning to code other languages. writing every day. I remember dropping my wife off at work and then going down by the water front in Georgetown just to sit with coffee and write. sometimes I would go to the eclipse in dc. the scenery is very inspiring. and then it stopped. I got complacent and stopped learning. stopped writing. it all seemed so hopeless. it got to the point where I was just looking at less skilled jobs just so that I could work again.

when it seemed the bleakest, God stepped in and provided me with a job working with the skills that I had been using for decades. I just didn’t see it that way at the time. so, another ten years drifted by.

covid hit, and we were all forced to work from home. our kids didn’t live near us at the time, and our grandkids were living in pennsylvania, so we decided to move to pa to be around the grandkids. looking back on how it all happened you can see God’s hand in it. it was miraculous how it all happened. we had bids out on numerous houses over a few months. nothing was landing. and then it did. with a house a block away from the grandkids. a house that we just adore. a house that fills all our needs and then some. God working again.

so I settled in and started to work from home. we were very happy. then my health took a turn. I’ve had a condition where I can’t leave the house for any length of time, and it has gotten worse over time.

last week we received an email saying that we have to return to the office full time. part of the new government. all government employees must return. the thing is that I’m not a government employee. I’m a contractor working for a private company but the tentacles are long on this one.

my consternation at this point is not the fact that I have to go back to the office, but actually can’t because of my condition, but the fact that i’v had another decade to learn new skills and start something new on my own and haven’t. I’ve started to learn new coding skills but haven’t kept them going. start and stop again.

so now I face another very difficult time. another life changing situation. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks slowly climbing inside myself. floundering on what to do and what directions to take.

this morning my wife reminded me that God is in control and we need to trust in Him. something I haven’t been doing lately.

after pondering, I saw that He has moved every ten years for the last couple of decades to make profound changes in our lives. each one painful, but better than the last one. we have finally arrived at the point where we want to be. a house that we love to live in and closeness to our grandkids so that we can build those memories and connections. it wouldn’t have happened without His work three or four years ago. painful, but excellent in the end.

so now I’m working back to Him to see what is next on the journey. I believe that He wouldn’t move us here and then jerk it all out from under us. Job comes to mind. God let Satan at him but Job remained faithful and was rewarded by God. I’m not sayin that I’m like Job in any way. no where near it. but I’m turning back to Him again to see what He has in store for us. I know it will be better. I has been every time.