Story of my (Adult) Life: Part Three

Read Part Two here.

So off to Chicagoland we went.

Greg went to school, and we both worked to make ends meet.

We found a great church there, where we met great people, but Illinois never felt like home. And we knew that after Greg got his certificate from the school for general auto mechanics, we would go on to a Manufacturer Specific Advanced Training (MSAT) school, which is where you pick one auto maker, get accepted to their school, and then you learn the specifics of their cars to be a mechanic at a dealership for that auto maker.

Greg's number one choice was to work for Audi.

Leading up to his interview with the school, we really prayed for God to make it clear to us if Audi was where He wanted us or not.

Greg got accepted in the first interview. God made it pretty clear where He wanted us!

Audi's school was in Phoenix, AZ so we made plans to move there after he finished school in Chicago.

A week before we were set to move, we got a call from the Audi MSAT saying they were postponing Greg's start date (which was, at that time, 5 weeks out) because they still had some graduates without jobs.

We decided to move anyway so we would be in the right place when the school started up again (and because it is WAYYY cheaper to live in Phoenix than in Chicago!)

So we moved. And we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Here is an excerpt from my blog when we were in Phoenix:

When God brought us out here to Phoenix, we thought we were just waiting for Audi's specialty school to start. Greg had been accepted, but they had postponed his start date so we just had to wait for them to start up again. Then, after moving here and about 2 months of waiting, we got a call saying that they decided to close the school indefinitely. Greg's only option was to attend Volvo's specialty school. There was lots of questioning when we were going through all of that, but I trusted that God's original plan all along was for Greg to become a Volvo mechanic and this was just the only way for Him to get us to agree to it. ;)

We got the job at the Volvo dealership here in Virginia Beach (our only job offer) and so we were sure that this was where God wanted us.

Now let me pause for a second.

If you have been reading my novel of a story up until now, you've read that we've moved quite a few times.

Our 6th wedding anniversary is coming up in October, and Gregory and I have called 6 different places our home.

We're ready to settle down. And stay in one house for more than 1.5 years.

So when we came to Virginia Beach, we were really hoping we'd like it enough to retire here.

That wasn't the case.

However, we're only 3 hours north of where we were stationed in North Carolina, so after we moved to VA Beach, we went to visit for a weekend trip.

We'd been gone for 2.5 years at this point, and I never stopped missing our friends and our church. I never wanted to leave in the first place, and for some reason I could never let them go.

Visiting seemed to intensify this ache to be back.

I remember driving back home after our visit, and Greg could sense how badly I wanted to move back. He basically told me that I need to get over it because we weren't ever moving back there.

The next day, I sad down and cried and prayed and cried some more about the whole thing. I asked God to change my heart away from wanting to be in New Bern. I didn't want to long to be there for the rest of my life, and I wanted to be on the same page as Gregory with where we wanted to grow roots. I prayed and prayed for God to let me let them go.

That night, Gregory came home from work and told me that maybe, in a couple years after working here for a bit, we could look into moving back to New Bern.

I never told him, but I knew that was God telling me that, one day, we'd be back in New Bern.

Read Part Four here.