There I was sitting in my desk chair at work, phone up to my ear, my heart pounding and my breathing quickened. I couldn’t think straight. I know my husband wanted me to say something, anything! But I had no words. I had nothing.
A Little Background…
My husband had been working as a project manager for a heavy civil construction company and putting in more than 40 hours a week. We weren’t in any different of a situation than most of our friends and colleagues. Kids in school, both of us working, and the cliche daily struggle to get our kids where they needed to go. If we were on time, it was a good day. The past year had been particularly difficult. Both of our jobs demanded more from us and our children’s schedules were particularly cumbersome. I can’t pin point what was different between the past year and the any previous year, they all had hurdles, but the weight of our responsibilities was much heavier. We knew his work was becoming frustrated that he would have to leave early and come in late because of the kids’ schedule, and we didn’t know when they would want to talk to him.
The talk came on a Wednesday.
As I eagerly listened to the other end of the line, my husband told me that after a lengthy discussion, his boss was giving him 6 weeks. He offered to stay longer but 6 weeks was the agreed upon decision.
6 weeks.
We wanted him to come home. We had big plans to get us both home. BUT….this way was not part of our plan.
The previous week my husband was called to serve as bishop of our ward. We had very little savings, because we kept investing into our business, and like everyone else, we had bills to pay.
The way it came about… Was. Not. Part. Of. Our. Plan.!!!!
A Change in the Air
We had known change was coming. I don’t know how to describe it, but we felt a shift, like the calm that happens before a storm when the birds stop chirping and a breeze can be felt, and if you take a deep breath, you can smell the rain before you see it. It wasn’t a scary feeling, but a feeling that neither of us knew how to talk about. So we would pray about what we should do for weeks – how to make everything work out and to let us know when we needed to act. We kept it broad because, we had NO IDEA what was about to happen.
But there we were. A door was open and we had to decide if we would walk through it. His last day was the week before Thanksgiving.
If this was such great news, why was my heart pounding, my breathing quick, and my anxiety building? I immediately thought of something a mentor said to me…
“You are given each moment. Not each day, not each week, only a moment. The next moment you may be gone. You decide what you will do with that moment. You can spend it worrying about your future or dwelling on the past. But to truly live, you must LIVE in the moment. Breathe. Inhale and Exhale. You only have that one moment.”
So I did that. And felt peace for the moment. Sometimes amid the chaos, that is all we are given is a moment of peace. But generally that’s all we need to keep going. We need that moment of reassurance to know we are on the right track so we can forge ahead. It is a gift from Him in moments of what seem like darkness. I told my husband that was great news and we plunged in to the unknown.
We are still there – in the unknown. But every time I begin to get worried, I remember the gift I’ve been given….a moment.