A Split-Second Decision

I’m not adventurous by nature.  You’ll never catch me jumping out of an airplane or bungee jumping off of a bridge.  I hate change, and I always weigh decisions carefully before I take action.  That’s what makes this story so interesting.  My husband and I threw caution to the wind, and made a split second decision that would change our lives.

We were newlyweds.  I had returned to graduate school three months earlier to get my teaching degree in special education.  My husband, Shannon, was working at a job he hated and was looking for something better.  That’s when it happened.  The phone call.

I was home sick from school when the phone rang.  I answered it, and it was the sales manager at a Christian radio station 100 miles away.  He had gotten Shannon’s name from our local Christian radio station, my husband’s former employer, and was wondering if  Shannon would be interested in a job.  He left not one, not two, not three, but four phone numbers to make sure Shannon would be able to get in touch with him.

That evening Shannon called the Phil, the sales manager, and had a good talk.  Just for fun, he set up an interview at our local mall, yes the mall, the next afternoon.  An hour before the interview, Shannon called me to tell me he had locked his keys in the car.  I rushed to pick him up and drive him to the mall, so he could make his interview.  Because I’m a curious person, I walked my husband up to the food court to his interview, and then I planned to do some shopping.

It turned out that Phil’s entire family was there also.  Tracy, Phil’s wife, invited me to walk around the mall with her family while Phil was interviewing my husband.  As I shopped with Tracy, I listened to her talk about homeschooling her children and living a frugal life.  I was intrigued.

The interview went well, and the following week Phil called to offer Shannon the job.  He wanted Shannon to start in two weeks.  Two weeks.  I was in grad school and wasn’t set to graduate until the following June.  It was October.  What to do?

In a split second we made the decision that would change our lives.  Shannon would take the job.  I would quit grad school.  We would move.  And we only had two weeks to work out the details.

Because Shannon couldn’t take any time off work, we had one day to find a place to live in our new town.  Phil and Tracy drove us around town to look at various apartments.  It was a Saturday, and we couldn’t get a hold of most of the property managers.  We took down a few numbers and headed back home.  We were finally able to get in touch with a property manager, but we didn’t have a free day to drive 100 miles to see the apartment.  We called Phil and Tracy, and they checked out the apartment for us.  They assured us it was OK.  We told the property manager we’d take it.

A week later we moved, sight unseen, to our new apartment.  I dropped out of grad school.  Shannon started a new job.  It was the best decision we have ever made.  We were able to establish ourselves as a married couple away from the pressures of having our parents close by.  We were surrounded by mature Christians in our new church home, and we grew in our faith at a rapid pace.  We started our family, and I was encouraged to be a stay-at-home mom, despite our lack of a large income.  Our new home was in a poor community.  Money wasn’t important, but family was.  The values of our friends and neighbors rubbed off on us, and these became the values on which we based our family.

Seven years after we made that move, the time was right for us to move back home.  We live in a faster paced community again.  People are more educated here.  There is a greater emphasis on how much money you have and what you own.  Here it’s more of a temptation to try to keep up with the Joneses.  We are able to stand strong against those pressures because of the foundation we built in a little blue-collar community where the majority have lower-middle class incomes, and a strong family is more important than anything money can buy.

Today I’m still a stay at home mom.  We rent our house, because we can’t afford to buy right now.  Our kids don’t wear designer clothes, and we don’t throw birthday parties that cost hundreds of dollars.  We drive older, paid-for cars, and we don’t often pay to see movies in the theater.  And we’re happy.  All because of a decision we made 12 years ago.  Many people thought I was crazy to drop out of school.  People thought Shannon was nuts to take such a low paying job. Yet, it was the best decision we’ve ever made.

This post is my entry in Scribbit’s Write-Away contest.  The subject is "My Most Adventurous Moment".  To enter, visit Scribbit for details.