I Love You Moore than Hollywood

Alabama that is. 

Today is exactly 9 months since Daniel was laid off. Hard to believe it has been that long (as my sister pointed out, we could have had a baby by now). 

I digress... this morning Daniel got the call we have been waiting for. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was on the phone with a job offer and a possible start date of mid January or the first of February.

All of a sudden things are in fast forward instead of on pause. Daniel officially has one week to think about and accept the offer. Since he was already scheduled to go to Jackson on Monday for an interview at a frozen food plant, he is going to proceed as planned. He will just be up front with them that he has another offer on the table. We are planning on accepting the TVA offer, but you never know. We will leave it up to God.

For some time I have prayed that God would make it abundantly clear to us where we should be. So we will continue to pray in that vein and if for some reason Jackson feels like the better fit, we will weigh our options and make the decision at the end of next week.

It is such a relief to have this burden lifted. Now we have to figure out things like 1) how fast can we finish our house/get it on the market; 2) how will I break the news to my employer - I am hoping to negotiate with them to keep me on and let me work from home; 3) where will we live/how soon should we move? Lots to think about in the coming weeks. For now we will take it one day at a time and be thankful for our blessings. 

Interesting side note... We have been wanting to purchase furniture for our basement for some time. But once Daniel was laid off, we really didn't feel like it was prudent to spend the money and that we should focus on saving it instead. 

Over the past 9 months, we have managed to save up quite a bit. After Daniel's very first interview (back in August), we agreed that once he got a job offer we would go ahead and purchase our furniture.

Well time passed and nothing seemed to be working out on the job front and we had all of this money saved up. So we decided to rethink our plan. Last week we discussed the situation and agreed that we had enough in our savings that it would be OK to go ahead and buy furniture. Then Daniel decided our life would be easier if we had a trailer to haul said furniture with. So he started looking on craigslist for a trailer. 

Nothing seemed to be working out, though we did manage to find and purchase an armoire through craigslist (which we proceeded to haul home in two trips on the roof rack of our Altima, but that is a story for another day.) See photo above.

In the end, we didn't end up getting a trailer and therefore did not get the furniture we have been wanting.

Then on Monday, Daniel found a great deal on a small trailer that would be perfect for us and he went about purchasing it with the intention that we would go THIS weekend to buy our furniture.

Then today he got his offer from TVA. He called to inform me that we could really buy our furniture and not feel bad about breaking our agreement because he had been offered a job! Praise God and pass the ammunition. OK, don't pass the ammunition, but definitely praise God for working this all out in his own time.

Oh. And for those of you who don't know where Hollywood, Alabama is, it is a small town (that is a loose word for where this nuclear facility is located) that is about an hour south of Chattanooga, Tennessee.