The Road to Second Chances
When I wrote about our Moving to Alaska story last December, never in my wildest dreams did I think we'd be given a second chance to move back to Virginia.
That's where everything began. It was where Harold officially started his career as a commercial airline pilot, it was where we bought our first place together, and it was where we got married and fell in love with the land and the history. It was also where plans to start a family began.
But…we made the decision to leave Virginia. Part of it was financial and part of it was because we missed family. We also wanted to live closer to family when we started having children of our own. Long story short, Harold left the career of his dreams and then the work he had lined up fell through. It took two years for him to find work. And during that time, my writing business was slow. It was a difficult time for the both of us.
Finally, almost three years into our marriage, when we were on the verge of calling it quits, we went to Rocky Mountain Christian Church.
Have you ever gone to a church service and felt that it was put on just for you? That's what happened to us. Marriage on the rocks, and the first sermon we hear is about marriage. God couldn't have planned it more perfectly. The next two sermons were about marriage, too. God was giving us a second chance. He wasn't ready for us to quit.
When I look back on all of the things that have happened over the years, all of the hardships and challenges we've been through…when I think about why we didn't fight harder to make it work in Virginia so Harold could keep his career (even though we had fought pretty hard as it was), it's not hard to see the meaning in all of this. It's not hard to see that God was preparing us for this blessed life. He was fitting all of the pieces together, putting dear friends in our lives so we would learn valuable lessons about life, love, marriage, and relationships.
As crazy as our lives have been, I wouldn't change a thing. He broke us so we could become the people we are today. So He could prepare us for this life He had planned. Without all of those things, we wouldn't have the capacity to truly appreciate where we are now and the second chance that we've been given. And most importantly, we wouldn't have the strong marriage that we have now.
When I said we'd move back to Virginia in a heartbeat if it weren't so expensive, I never thought it would happen. But then Harold got his airline job back and now here we are! And expensive or not, we're sticking it out. At least until He calls us on another mission!
Only God knows the full purpose in all of this. I can only hope that our story has touched your life in some way.
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