STOP and Go

Do you ever feel like life is just a series of Stop and Go's? That is very much how it has been feeling to me lately. Mostly it is a Go, but every now and then you get a huge STOP that makes you have to wait and readjust before proceeding. I wish there were yellow's to give you a heads up before you get the STOP.

We received a huge STOP in life in January when we found out that Landon was getting dismissed from his program. That one really took the breath out of me. It took a while to regroup and move past it, but we are finally doing that. He spent the spring reapplying to the program and paying a ton of money to get readmitted, but we are now finally at a Go with that. Last week he started retaking one of his "too low of grade" classes, a B-. It is just a two week long course, so by the end of the week he should be finished and we will be one B- less on his transcript and one of three classes down that have to be retaken.

There have been some good things come from this STOP in life. I have enjoyed having my husband back. I hadn't realized what the stress of school had really done to him until he has been on this break. Within 6 weeks of getting dismissed my fun loving, happy to play and talk husband was back. He is more willing to be social and go do things and has even picked up a few hobbies. It has been great!

This STOP in life also did some really wonderful things for our finances. We have really just been playing the hold your breath till you make it game with our finances. Just trying to hold on until he graduated. Well, with him not graduating this month, we had to readjust our game plan. We decided that we needed to reign in our money and put our budget on just what we are making from our part time jobs. My in-laws gave us the very best gift ever, Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University. I finally cracked that open and it has made a world of difference in our lives. I have told them this over and over again, but I have to say it once more, Thank You!!

Since this huge STOP our life really has been on a Go pattern. We got our kitchen remodeled, I have started training for a marathon, our kids have been growing in leaps and bounds. We also felt like we were on a GO with Landon's job. We had heard rumor that there would be a full time position open up at FedEx in August of this year. We were so excited and decided that Landon could just do the odd end jobs around the house until then and then really his schooling could take us as long as he wanted. There would be no rush because we would be having a real paycheck coming in.

Well, of course we had to hit another STOP sometime. We found out last week that the full time job will not be coming this summer. It won't open up until May of next year. A full year away! Oh how I hate stops. While this one stinks, it has not been the horrible set back that it could have been. Because we made so many changes in our life in the last few months, this stinks, but we are no longer just holding our breath and trying to make it to a full time job. It was a quick readjustment in our mental plan and we are trying to GO again. Landon has been applying for part time jobs and we are just waiting until the right one comes along. Then hopefully in a year from now he can really step up and take the full time position from FedEx.

I really do thank the Lord for his counsel in our lives. Sometimes I might not like what he does, but he does have a GO plan for us. We just have to figure out what that is.

On a completely different note, I hit a new milestone in my marathon training today. I ran 9 miles and realized that this is the longest distance I have ever run at one time in my life. My longest before today was 7 miles. So, this means I have hit a point in my training that every long run will now be the longest I have ever run before. Kinda cool. So, lets keep it going! Marathon, here I come...