It's a God thing

I've got a job!  That can be good and bad right ;)  But, I am excited!

I have been at home since January 2015, by choice.  Due to circumstances, my full time, 40 hour a week job, had me down to one day a week and usually not even a full day because there just wasn't enough to do.

I felt like I was wasting time and resources by going in most of the time.  So I voluntarily quit.  My husband makes enough to support us on just his income, although there isn't a lot of extra.

I enjoyed my spring and summer.  It made adjusting to surgery and my new life easier.  It made it easier to exercise and spend time with family.  But I was starting to feel like, if I would just get a part time job, we could pay off these medical bills so much faster.  And pretty much our "little bit of extra" was eaten up each month by those bills.  

My husband, he's such a dear, he keeps telling me I don't have to get a job.  We made an agreement that once either the house or the credit cards were paid off that I could stay home if I wanted.  We paid off all of our credit card debt in Dec 2013.  It was a glorious feeling!  (We should have the house paid off in 3 more years!)

Anyway, we have a vacation planned (and paid for) for later this year, and I was thinking who is going to hire me knowing I need a chunk time off so soon?  I told my husband that this was the first vacation we would have in 5-6 years, so I wasn't going to do anything that made us have to cancel it.  We are both so looking forward to it.  So I thought maybe I could pick up a little money until after the vacation by babysitting through Care.com.

I applied to several one-time jobs, short term jobs, and part or full-time jobs that didn't start until after our vacation.  But no luck.  Although I did land a pet-sitting job that is over Christmas week, but that didn't really help me now in September/October.

Then on Sunday, I saw this job that was looking for overnight help starting now.  It is for a single parent in the medical profession and is third shift 7 days on, 7 days off.  One of the children is autistic and the ad stated it would be good if  person that was hired has special needs experience.  One of my nephews is autistic.  I thought maybe I should apply.  Then I had second and third thoughts, because 7 nights straight away from my own bed and again, the vacation.  But I just kept thinking I should apply.

So I did, I was up front explaining that I would be unavailable a certain week, but if I was considered for the position I could work out future happenings around the work schedule.  I also said that I didn't have professional special needs experience, but I do frequently babysit for my nephews, one of whom is autistic.

Later that day, I got a message back about the job.  Earlier in the afternoon I had just setup an interview for another job from a family that actually reached out to me.  So I had all sorts of anxiety about the interviews and what if they both want me, who do I go with.  All sorts of scenarios.  Because that is the kind of person I am.  Try to map every possibility out and cause myself all sorts of anxiety.  Ugh.

Finally, I prayed about it and tried to let it go.  I asked that God make it clear where he wanted me and if I wasn't supposed to have either job then that was okay too.  I felt better.  We emailed back and forth a couple times.  I had an interview setup to today and an interview setup for Saturday.

Then Tuesday morning, the second family, with the interview on Saturday, let me know that they had decided to go with someone else.  At first I was bummed, I felt like I had been rejected.  But they hadn't even met me, so really I can't take it personally.  They just liked someone else's job experience/qualifications better because from what I understood no interviews were being held until Saturday due to the parents' work schedules.

So that left me with the Wednesday interview for the overnight position.  I went today, nervous of course, but hopeful.  It was immediately clear that the interview was a more of a "get to know you" interview rather than a "will you work out for us" type interview.  I was told that more than once that the person had been praying about what to do and it was such a relief when I applied after the string of college girls that had been hired before me.  How it would be so nice that I only lived ten minutes away.  We talked for a hour and twenty minutes about the children and ourselves.  There is a possibility that the schedule could be changing in the future so it won't be so hard on either of us.  The week I can't work is one of the off weeks, so it works out perfectly.  We setup a time/day for my first night.

I feel like this must be a God thing.  We both prayed about it.  We are both just what the other needs.  I am really looking forward to this.