This last year when I was pregnant with the boys, Eric and I watched the movie Mr. Mom starring Michael Keaton through our Netflix streaming account. It’s a silly 80’s movie in which the protagonist gets laid off and his savvy wife goes back to work full time while he stays home with the children. We got a chuckle out of it. We asked one another, “Could you imagine?” Well, the reality is that is indeed our current reality. I wrote a post a little while back about having a different kind of day. In that day Eric got an unexpected phone call in which he was offered a job. A good job. A great job. Prayers of thanks and tears followed from both of us. There was no pressure or rush so we were going to pray on it and make the big decision. Eric had been with his company for nearly thirteen years and wanted to give advance notice if he were to leave. Less than four hours later Eric was called into an office at work and was terminated from his position. There was no warning, just fired. Talk about the decision being made for us, huh? It was a lot to process.
There’s a lot that can be said about Eric having to come to terms with what happened in getting fired. Eric is incredibly loyal so the circumstances were hard to take. He had gone to work at the same place each weekday for so many years and I was encouraging him that it would be like a grieving process. The next workday rolled around and it was disorienting to both of us for him to not go in to work. I am so proud of him however for being motivated and not letting despondency overtake him. He has been home with the boys the last couple of weeks and takes such good care of them. He has managed to get some ‘honey do’ items checked off the household list. He is doing an on-line course in working towards his bachelor’s degree. He landed a consulting job doing the safety classes for a local public utilities district. The man is keeping himself busy.
A lot of blessings have been happening in all of this and I would love to testify to God’s faithfulness:
- The order of the job offer and subsequent firing prevented us from despair. It revealed God’s will and let us know that He was with us. It could have been different and so much more discouraging but God was gracious to us.
- Eric will be going back to work, Lord willing, but for now gets to spend lots of quality time with our boys. There is lots of bonding going on there. I love to come home and see our boys look at their papa with such love and affection. Plus, Eric is getting them on a good schedule.
- Money started showing up seemingly from nowhere. After three plus years of working to settle an injury claim after my car accident, we finally reached a settlement with the insurance company and the check came in the mail the same day Eric lost his job. Then a week later we got a check from our mortgage company reimbursing us for overpayment into our escrow account and reimbursement from our insurance company for a deductible we had paid for a car repair after their subrogation committee determined we were not at fault. Amazing.
- I have never been so grateful to be a working mom! I feel privileged I get to help provide for my family. A&W will also continue to have health insurance through my work. Thankfully we decided to dually insure the boys through both our jobs. If we had not done so, our children would be without health insurance until my work’s next open enrollment period.
And here is Mr. Beef, a.k.a Papa, with his dear boys
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