From Kansas to Houston
Once upon a time, there was a Lawson family who bought themselves a house in their little Kansas hometown. There were tears shed over the thought of not being able to buy this house. There was a time when they really didn't believe this house would be theirs. But, guess what! They DID end up getting the house, and the renovations began.
The renovations took a month to make the house move-in ready. Money and time was spent, working to make this house the kind of place the Lawsons wanted to live in. In September of 2018, their hard work and sweat had paid off. They finally lived in a house of their own and were blissfully happy there.
Sure, there was still a lot of work needed to make it EVERYTHING they wanted, but that would all happen over time.........or so they thought.
Fast forward three months to November of that same year.
One day, the wife/mama was sitting at home with her babies, when she received a forwarded email from her husband. He was selected for an interview with an oil company in....(drumroll, please!)......Houston, Texas. After talking with his wife and making the mutual decision of "what could it hurt?", he allowed them to fly him out for the interview.
The interview obviously went well, the husband received a call the next day, offering him a job.......
And here we are! We moved our little family of four (and a dog!) to a HUGE city in Texas, eight hours away from "home." (Though I really do believe it takes more like TEN!)
To fully understand this, you need a bit of backstory. My husband (Kyle) has four college degrees, 3/4 of them focused on geology. Before we had kids, our plan was always for us to end up in Oklahoma (that was our preference!). In 2015, he was doing an internship in OKC when the oil economy tanked and they were unable to offer many of their interns a permanent position, as was previously expected. Our worlds were rocked (no geological pun intended! haha). After his internship, we returned to Wichita. I was eight months pregnant with our firstborn at the time and we didn't know what direction to go in next. He finished the next semester of his Master's degree, but we were feeling pulled back to our hometown after having Lindyn. So he left WSU, just one semester short of a Master's degree, and we found a rental in our hometown (about an hour southeast of Wichita), where my parents still lived.
Kyle took a new direction with school, and he began his Master's in Business Administration in January 2016. We felt this was a good move; one that would make future employment easy. So, we got reacquainted with small-town life, not even caring that we were leaving "city life" behind. Things were simple, and that was JUST fine. I started a part-time job at the local hospital that allowed me to spend more time with my daughter than teaching would have. He worked various full-time jobs while going to school.
Later, we added Kade to our family and we moved into another rental across town. Our job situations stayed the same, for the most part, and Kyle decided to finish BOTH of his master's degrees, at the same time. (Yes, he IS crazy. And yes, he's also CRAZY GOOD at school!) Luckily, we were able to stay in our rental on a month-to-month basis for the next few months, in case Kyle received an offer from an oil company. If that had happened, we wouldn't have wanted to be wrapped up in another lease for a year. We wanted to be able to pack up and go when the time came.
Well, halfway through the summer, we started weighing out our options, in case the offer never came. He had sent his resume to a geology expo, but hadn't received any interest from prospective employers. We came to the conclusion that, maybe, God didn't want us anywhere else. Maybe we could stay in our hometown and raise our babies there, where things were simple. Their grandparents were close-by and we loved that. We would know most of the other kids' parents as our kids went to school together.
Kyle was working at the best job he'd had as he finished his degree, and he liked it. It wasn't enough for me to get to be the full-time SAHM that I'd always dreamed of, but it paid our bills. We felt like God was telling us to stay put.... so what did we do? In August, we bought a house (the one in the pictures above!) outside of city limits, and a five minute drive from my parents' house. We lived on a gravel road and our kids had room to RUN. We fell in love with living this way, and fast.
So, why did we move, you ask? Because we felt like we were/are meant to pursue this opportunity. We had to say goodbye to the life we had (for three months...lol) and embrace the unknown. Seriously, we knew nothing about Houston and knew nobody! It' was TERRIFYING!! And it still is, after a month of being here. But, we feel God's hands in this. If we didn't, we wouldn't have given up the life we loved, or left the grandparents our kiddos are obsessed with..
This is right. I tried to fight this at the beginning. I cried and cried about leaving the house we worked SO hard on, and the thought of not being able to just see my mom every day was/is just awful. But, we WILL still see them. There are things called roads between Houston and Kansas, and even airports, if needed! We found a house (another rental...) with a fourth bedroom, specifically for our family, or anyone else who might want to visit.
We've visited some of the churches available to us down here and I'm starting to meet people. So, I'll be making mommy friends before I know it, and I'm starting to learn more about the area we are in. (By the way, there's a beach within an hour from us!)
Anyway, back to the story... Sometimes, God has other plans. I don't think it was a mistake to buy our house. I think we needed it. I think that maybe, God wanted us to find contentment with what we had before offering us what he had planned for us. And, who knows? The future is in His hands, and we just need to learn to let HIM lead us. He will take care of us during this "new start."
Stay tuned for more of our adventures.
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