Blessings

Some of you may know that I am a firm believer in storytelling. I believe that God gives us good stories in our lives so that we can share them, so that they might serve as testaments of His love and presence in the big and small moments of our lives. With that said, and with Thanksgiving right around the corner, I thought I'd share our most recent story about what we are most grateful for. It is a good one indeed!

When Neal was told that his company wanted him in the L.A. office by Labor Day, we put our house on the market almost immediately. May 1st was the official day the "For Sale" sign went in the front yard. During the first two months we had some activity but nothing that seemed very promising. In July, it seemed like the market virtually froze, and we had zero activity on our house for weeks. As our move date continued to approach we considered all of our options, the best of which was to sell our house and make a clean break.

As we entered mid August, we still weren't getting any prospects (though I had even put a picture of St. Joseph inconspicuously on our flier) and on top of that I still hadn't found a job in California, though I had flown out twice for interviews. With the move now being just several weeks away, we didn't know what else to do, except the one thing that is often the hardest - letting go and letting God.

We decided to focus our prayer and say a 9-Day novena (there is a beautiful one dedicated to St. Therese of Lisieux, the "Little Flower of Jesus"). Prayer is a funny thing in that the longer we do it, the more at peace we feel about everything in life, especially when the prayers are truly heartfelt. As we continued to pray each day we continued to feel more at peace, not knowing how it would work out but somehow feeling that it would.

The week after we finished our novena, we suddenly had four house showings after six weeks of no activity. We were thrilled, and waited patiently and see how things progressed.

That same week, I received a call from a school that I had applied to and interviewed with, and found out that I got the job. I would be working in the Development office at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula. Words can't describe how happy I was to receive this news and how incredibly blessed I felt not only to have found a good job in a struggling economy, but at a Catholic college none-the-less. It was solely by the grace of God.

As we packed up our house and headed west, we still hadn't sold our home but had one interested buyer - one of the four who came to look at our house that week after our novena. After spending a week in California Neal had to fly back to Houston for three weeks to help train the person who took his place. During that time, our one interested buyer came to look at the house several more times, and two days before Neal moved out for good, we got the offer. After one month of escrow, we officially closed the deal on October 22nd.

We have often found in life that putting things in God's hands generally works out far better than putting them in our own, and this experience reminded us of that. We are very grateful for what we've been given and will continue to ask for the Lord's guidance as we build our new life here.