Hammer Fall Revisited

Ten years ago today, I was laid off.

The result of that layoff - after a 4 month job search - was job halfway across the country and the inevitable rather significant changes that came with it.  We literally uprooted all of our life and moved to a place where we knew absolutely no-one, leaving friends and family and church and school and a rather lovely house and garden.

I cannot remember a time more exciting and yet more desolate when I received the call for the new job - excited to have a position and because we were (literally) out of money, desolate because all of our life - the whole darn thing - was being torn away from us.

It worked out much differently than I expected.

It is one of those experiences where one can look back and see that, in each and every way, God was with us:  the house for rent that just appeared before we needed it, the school that turned out to be a great foundation for our children and allowed them to be educated in a Christian environment at an affordable prices, the friends that they were immediately able to make (that have in some cases still stuck with them), the church we started at and then the church we transitioned to because The Ravishing Mrs. TB had a job there first, and the second house that came available for purchase just before the market would have become impossible for us.

For myself, I found not only one job and then another where I found the sort of co-workers one always hopes for but a series of new things to do:  Highland Games and Iaijutsu, actually accomplishing the dream of writing a book - and then nine more. I found the rabbit shelter and the best darn used book store ever.

Mind you, the transition has not all been smooth.  My heart is forever back at The Ranch, no matter how much I do or see here.  My family and closest friends still all reside there and for all that I try to make of it, this never feels truly like "home."

I have been a bit nervous this month - as I always seem to be in January anymore, but especially this year for some reason as there is something about 10 years that feels like a sort of bookmark of sorts, the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning.  Or maybe I am simply confusing the nervousness for the restlessness that seems to come from time to time, always seem to predict some kind of change the way my knee now seems to notify of a change in the weather.

It has been a good 10 years, far better than I could have hoped or planned for.  No matter what happens, I feel confident there are only better things to come.