We're moving to D.C.!

Monday morning, I sat in the mauve microsuede recliner in the upstairs bedroom in my in-laws’ house where we’ve been staying, watching my husband prepare for yet another job interview over Zoom.

He set up a small folding table in front of the shuttered folding closet doors and set a wooden chair from the kitchen at his makeshift desk. Then he slid the towering stack of Rubbermaid totes housing our kids’ books and puzzle and random school supplies just out of view of his laptop camera, and I smiled. If the people he’s interviewing with could only see the rest of the room…

It was a very humanizing view, one that took me back to the pandemic era when adults everywhere were shoving junk out of the way of their background for Zoom meetings, pairing suit jackets and ties with pajama pants or jogging shorts, shutting out noisy pets and toddlers in hopes of a few uninterrupted minutes to get work done. We were all just doing our best to make a good impression while we let our coworkers and employers and clients sneak a peak into our home lives.

It’s the same ritual he’d repeated for countless interviews. Time after time, he’d received positive feedback but then lost the opportunity to an internal candidate. It had been a discouraging cycle. But this time seemed different. There was fresh hope in the air, and also a more intense sense of surrender. We knew that, even though he was fully qualified for the position, it would have to be God who delivered it into his hands.

I was rocking in that same mauve recliner two hours later, answering an email, when Kelley burst in the room, the sound of a woman’s Australian accent coming through his speakerphone. He walked in just in time for us both to hear her say the words we’d been praying for: “We all just really enjoyed getting to know you and think you’re such a great fit for our team. We’d love to offer you the position.”

Immediately, both of our heads dropped in overwhelming relief. Months of intense prayer, listening for God’s voice, following his direction through those small stirrings in our spirits, even when we appeared foolish, then experiencing disappointment and reevaluating the moves we’ve made over the past year, questioning whether we were still on the right path, still hearing His voice. We’d persevered. We fumbled through faith and trust, looking for the joy in the unknown, in the waiting.

And it was all worth it. God came through. And in a bigger way than we could have ever dreamed.

Kelley accepted the amazing job offer for a position in Washington, D.C., with one of the biggest and most prestigious international facilities management companies in the world, managing the account for the Embassy of Australia with more than 20 embassy facilities throughout North America.

Y’all, I just can’t.

I can’t even utter the words out without giggling. It doesn’t seem possible. Just a couple of months ago he was interviewing with PetSmart, and we were just excited about the potential employee discount on dog food. (Ironically, while our family was in Pennsylvania for that interview, we decided to take a day trip with the kids to D.C. and absolutely loved it.) But God has a reputation of doing the impossible, of whispering, “Dream a little bigger.” And He’s the only one who can take the credit for this miracle.

He’s also right on time, and when He moves, He moves quickly. Our family is moving to the D.C. area this weekend, and Kelley will start work around the end of the month. We are heading up north filled with gratitude, awe, and wonder. We’ve had a full year of living by faith, moment by moment, relishing our family time, resting and healing and stretching and growing. It has been such a gift.

There aren’t even adequate words to describe what this position means to our family. Maybe one day I’ll find the language I’m searching for to fully tell our story, but I can look back over the past 20 years of walking beside Kelley and see that God has used everything Kelley has gone through in his career to prepare him for this moment.

I couldn’t be prouder to walk beside Kelley and call him my husband. And I couldn’t be more grateful to the Lord for the ways He’s guided us, provided for us, and exceeded our every expectation. He is entirely faithful.