Yesterday Denton accepted a job at MeadWestVaco (MWV) as Senior IT Auditor in Richmond, VA.  Now, this hasn’t been a cake-walk, so sit back while I tell you the drama:

When Denton lost his job in January, we felt peace right away knowing that we would be taken care of.  We had savings, food storage, and we were really good about soaking our beans overnight and baking lots of bread!  It wasn’t actually until we received the offer from MWV that the stress set in.  Ya see, Denton has to travel 2 weeks out of every month and WE ALL KNOW that I don’t do well when Denton is on sabbatical.  So my first reaction was to NOT accept the job, I felt like if he did we would not be putting family first, which is the most important thing.  On the other hand, Denton felt like he should take the job.  So we were and still are very grateful to even have a job offer, we just didn’t know what to do yet. 

So we fasted and prayed, and prayed, and prayed.  We knew we couldn’t go forward w/o a definite answer.  Last Sunday I was talking w/my friend’s husband who use to work at Circuit City as well - he said to me that having talked to many people who have lost their jobs,  what we need to do is take what jobs we can get and grow our careers from there.  Now, this wasn’t anything overly poignant, or overly spiritual (sorry Skip, but thanks) but it was what I needed to hear and then it clicked for me.  At this time in the economy, we need to sacrifice time away from Denton to provide for our family.  And in that way we WOULD be putting family first.  Make sense?  It finally does to me.

So we’re trying not to be big brats and be grateful for what we have been given (there were 200 applicants for the position), and we really are.  But we aren’t excited about the travel part of the job.  I don’t think Noah was really that thrilled to build an ark, but he did it.  I wasn’t excited to wear skirts for 18 months on my mission, but I did it.  I’ve always said that Denton traveling would never be worth any amount of money.  And it’s not, but it’s worth providing for our family and having a job in troubled times.

Another perk - we have a great friend John Pilch who works at MWV and was the one to send this position to us right when it opened up.  We recently found out that a few other people in our ward work there and like it.  

So there you have it!  My next project after Denton starts his job:  build up to ONE YEAR of food storage!