December and January were big decision-making months for Josh and I. This past year especially, Josh was becoming increasingly exhausted from working 2 jobs. The golf course still was not offering benefits such as health insurance or a retirement account, which is why Josh has driven school bus since fall of 2013. Spring and fall are particularly exhausting, due to driving school bus, working at the golf course without high school employees, and spending approximately 15 hours at work a day. Josh has worked at the golf course for 21 seasons; he began in 2001. He'd been thinking a lot this past year about how he could work 20 more years there, but still walk away from it with nothing to show for himself because of the lack of retirement. He's given up 21 years worth of summer weekends (due to having to work when the tournaments were taking place). We've altered family vacations for his work schedule, and he's sacrificed going to family reunions and boys' scout camps and family trips just because he had to work. His body tires more easily and quicker now, and having 2 full-time jobs has taken its toll on him. We both have recognized the need for him to cut back and have just one job. Although the golf course job has been a good one for him--he's built the course up, he gets to be outdoors, he experiences beauty there on a daily basis, and he's well-known and appreciated for his constant efforts by the community--it wasn't a viable option to keep, due to the lack of benefits. However, the bus driving job doesn't provide the income necessary to have that as his only source of income, either. So, last fall, Josh applied for other jobs. He's applied for other jobs in the past, but since I had quit my job at West J and moved home last summer to be with our family in Salmon, he felt more free to finally explore future options for him, and he applied for positions in the golf course industry further from Salmon than his previous applications to Shelley, Idaho Falls, and Rupert.
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At the beginning of December, Josh had an interview at the city-owned golf course in Kemmerer, Wyoming. I went with him, and we discussed our options in great detail on the drive there and back. We decided the night after his interview that although this job had benefits and better pay, the position was too large and broad--he would be in charge of the golf course, the clubhouse, AND the city parks. He felt like he wouldn't be able to do the job justice, and that it would be like what he has now--too many hats to wear, too many jobs to complete in a day, and needing to work long hours to get everything done, so he decided he wasn't interested in taking the position. A few days later, when the city administrator called and offered the job to Josh, he turned them down and explained his reasons. The administrator said the board were unanimous about wanting to hire Josh, and that they could alter the position by removing one of the titles, if Josh would reconsider his stance. The new job offer was appealing, and after he drove back again to Kemmerer to meet with the city administrator a few days before Christmas, Josh decided it was too good of a job with incredible benefits to pass up. On December 20th, he told the city of Kemmerer that he would take the job, but he wouldn't be able to start until February 1, which would give him time to get his living arrangements figured out and enough time at his current job to find a replacement.
We decided to hold off telling the kids until New Years, because we didn't want Christmas to be overshadowed with a new job announcement and worries of future family dynamic changes. We decided not to tell anyone else until after the kids knew, so for nearly two weeks, only Josh and I knew about the upcoming changes and we were working out details about his living situation, our finances, and our family's spring schedule. A few days after Christmas, we purchased a 5th wheel for him to live in onsite at the Kemmerer Golf Course. We didn't tell anyone the real reason we got it, because we weren't ready to make the big announcement, but it just made things THAT much more real for us that big changes were happening...
Back in November, over Thanksgiving Break, we wanted to announce to the kids about Micah's Kids Matter Award. While we were sitting down to dinner one day, I said, "Your father and I have an announcement to make." Jonah replied, "You're getting divorced, right?" Then Ammon responded, "We've been expecting this." We all got such a big laugh out of it, that I forgot to actually make the real announcement, and we told them in the car on the way to Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma's house in Utah. I figured the announcement this time would be a little more serious, but the kids seemed unaffected by it. On New Year's Day at family dinner, I said to the kids, "Your dad and I have a big announcement." Nobody joked, so I continued and told them that dad got a new job in Wyoming, and how he would be living in a 5th wheel there, and Josh explained all the details about the new job, where it was at, and how we would benefit as a family from it. The kids seemed to take the announcement just fine, and we moved onto regular dinner conversation. It kind of shocked me how anti-climactic it was! It had been a difficult decision for me to handle when Josh told me he would accept the job, and I figured the kids would feel the same--but they didn't seem to struggle with it at all.
We made more announcements over the course of the next week. Next on the list was the golf board, who also seemed understanding about his new job and the reasons why he took it. Then he told his bus supervisor, who was a little stressed, because they're already short-handed, but his boss has always been supportive of Josh, and he said, "You do what you gotta do." We announced it to Josh's parents, and then I called my parents, and then we figured that instead of texting and calling our friends and extended family, we would just publicly announce it on Facebook, which we both did on January 8:
Throughout the next two weeks, Josh began the process of cleaning out his personal belongings from the golf course shop, listing his current position as Superintendent on various websites, and contacting others in the golf course industry in Idaho to let them know of the changes (he was currently serving on the State Board of Directors for the Idaho Golf Course Superintendents Association). While he was making all the preparations to quit his job and move, I was an emotional mess: I wanted Josh to know I supported him just as he supported me for the 4 years when I lived away from home and worked at West J, but I also worried about the distance between us and the stress of the job on him and his mental and physical wellbeing. I didn't know how to communicate to him about my worries without him feeling like I didn't support him, so I held in a lot emotionally and mentally and just became an overall basket case during January. As a result, we didn't seem to connect very well in our relationship and were often at odds with each other. And then, one week before he was going to leave, everything changed again.
Out of the blue on January 19th, Josh got a call from Berry Oil, an Eastern Idaho company with a shop and gas station in Salmon, and they offered him a job. He had an interview the next day on January 20th with some of the owners of the company in Idaho Falls. Their job proposal for him to manage the Salmon shop would also provide health insurance, a retirement account, and equal pay to the position he'd accepted in Kemmerer. After he seriously thought about it, he decided ultimately that he didn't want to leave Salmon, or live alone in a trailer 6 hours away from his family, or keep living life according to the golf course schedule with long summer commitments and the inability to have weekends off. It felt like a dream come true. I was elated at the chance to have him stay in Salmon and work just one job! He told them he would take the job, and would like to start February 1, which is when the other job in Kemmerer would've started. They said they would work out an official proposal on paper and would try to send it to him via email the next day. Josh requested that it for sure be sent before the end of the day on Saturday, January 22nd so that he could announce to the Kemmerer employers his intentions a full week before he was to start there.
However, Berry Oil didn't send a proposal the next day on Friday. By 6:00pm on Saturday, Josh was getting nervous, so he called the owner (the man who'd first called Josh to offer him the job), and the owner said he was sorry, but the job was no longer available. They had actually offered the job to another person a month before they offered it to Josh, but hadn't heard back from that person. When they heard Josh had given notice at the golf course and would be leaving the area, they offered it to him before he moved, thinking the previous person didn't want the job. But when Josh had given them the deadline to give him an official proposal on paper, they contacted the previous person they'd offered it to. They told the person they had another viable option for the job and would need an official decision from that person before they could issue the written proposal to Josh. And that person decided to take the job. Which meant it wasn't Josh's for the taking anymore. Josh was in shock...he'd already decided in his heart and mind in just a matter of days that he didn't want to go to Kemmerer, even though he was scheduled to arrive there in a week. However, he had already quit the golf course job, and didn't have another back-up option. He questioned the timing of it all, and why this company had even called and offered him a job if it wasn't meant to be his, and why the call was just one week before he was set to leave instead of a month before, and why he was put in this situation of now having no job in Salmon but also not wanting to go any longer to the job he'd committed to out of state. It was extremely frustrating and disheartening for him. However, for me, it was all very clear. I felt like it was a direct intervention from God. I could see everything in retrospect on a timeline of events in the order that was needed to happen.
Sometimes it's hard to describe in words when a feeling overtakes your mind and heart, and especially when it's a direct intervention from a heavenly source, but I could see God's hand working in our lives, and I tried to describe it the best I could for Josh. It took some explaining from me, and some time for him considering it before it seeped in (because he was still feeling frustrated from the recent events), but ultimately he accepted it and knew it to be true as well. Here's the gist of the timeline:
1. Although he'd considered other jobs (in other fields and industries) before, he felt that he would only leave his golf course job for a "better" golf course job (meaning higher pay at a larger course).
2. He was offered a job twice at other golf courses in the past 4 years, but the timing didn't feel right because I wasn't living in Salmon, and he didn't want to leave Ammon or the twins home alone.
3. I moved back home and took a job closer to Salmon.
4. He got a better golf course job offer with higher pay and amazing benefits, with all the items that he was looking for in his next job.
5. He accepted the golf course job offer after careful consideration.
6. He prepared for this job by giving himself enough time to leave the golf course he'd been with for 21 years. This 6-week window of time to close out his old job and prepare for his new job gave him a lot of time of reflection, and in his heart he recognized it was finally the right time to quit. And this allotment of time also opened up possibilities for him...
7. He got a job offer from Berry Oil to work in Salmon. Because of his commitment to only leave the golf course job for a different golf course job, he would've most likely turned it down if they'd offered it to him while he was still employed by the Salmon Golf Course before the Kemmerer job opened up, but the offer came after he'd already notified the golf course of his resignation.
8. Berry Oil renounced their job offer to Josh. However, their offer of a job with equal pay and benefits in Salmon made Josh re-think about leaving Salmon and moving away to Kemmerer. As a result, he'd decided to no longer move to Kemmerer, and he stuck with his newfound realization.
So although his job at the golf course in Salmon was done, and he no longer had a prospective job with Berry Oil, he'd already decided he wasn't going to Kemmerer anymore because it didn't feel right and he couldn't deny it.
Whenever I see a similar meme, it cracks me up! A different, totally unrelated (to this meme), major life decision was made at this point of our journey. Josh and I talked about it A LOT and decided what our next course of action would be. He notified Kemmerer that he wouldn't be able to accept the job after all, much to their dismay, and we decided that even though our monthly income would be less, we were going to wait and see if anything other viable jobs opened. I was just so happy that he wasn't leaving, that the decrease in our monthly income didn't phase me in the least. We'd done it before, and we could do it again. He spoke to his bus supervisor, who gave him a lot more hours in February, and then word got out that Josh was no longer taking the job in Wyoming and he wouldn't be moving, and a multitude of job offers began rolling in. It was incredible how many job offers he received, and he began to feel that he could be choosy about what he wanted for his future, and he didn't need to settle. Of all the offers he received, he interviewed for only the ones he was most interested in. He interviewed with Jake at Valley Wide as a driver, with JimBob Infanger at Ray's as an electrician, with a golf course in Sun Valley to be on their groundskeeping crew, and with a golf course in Idaho Falls to be on their maintenance crew. He also worked with his friend Jordan on some landscaping projects in March while he was deciding what job to take. Each of them had positives, but none of them felt completely right.
At the beginning of March, a position with the City of Salmon became available. It was grounds supervisor over the parks, cemetery, and pool. It was a job that really excited Josh--he felt he had the skills necessary, and he already knew all the employees from working alongside them at the golf course, and it was a job with insurance and retirement, and the pay would be equitable with what he was already making at the golf course. He applied for the job, and then interviewed with them on March 10. It was stressful waiting to hear back from them, but they offered it to him, and he accepted! He began working for the city the last week of March when he already had time off from driving bus due to the school district's spring break. It took several weeks to start figuring things out, but as time as progressed, he's felt more confident in his new position. He likes having weekends off, is grateful for the benefits package with insurance and retirement, and he gets along with the parks crew and the cemetery crew. He's learned a lot already, especially regarding the pool maintenance. He especially likes being up at the cemetery of all the locations he's in charge of. The city also gave him a Chevy Colorado truck to use while he's on the job, and t-shirts to wear as a uniform, too.
In addition to his hours at the new City job, (which he refers to as PCP Supervisor: Parks, Cemetery, Pool), he's continued to drive bus occasionally for athletic trips and a few routes as needed this spring which his bus supervisor has really appreciated. We sold the 5th wheel trailer in March, since we no longer needed it for Josh to live in. And I can honestly say our marriage has never been better. I'm glad that I moved home, and that he stayed home. I LOVE having our family all live together under just one roof again! I'm grateful for the heavenly intervention that took place in order for this to happen, and I'm happy to report that we all lived happily ever after. ;)
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