No Go

I found out on Saturday that I didn't get the teaching job. I was disappointed, but have recovered fairly quickly. I still have a job, which is a huge advantage over the position I found myself in over the summer when people were turning me down. It does have a tendency to cushion the blow when everything isn't riding on whether you get the next job or not. Still, I'd love to be working a schedule that fit my personality a little better and allowed me to volunteer at church as a musician instead of as a support person and I'd love to be able to provide a little better financially for my family. My hope is that it will come in time.

This whole adventure has felt a bit like a roller coaster ride. Unfortunately, we seem to have stalled out at the top of the first climb, and I hate heights. I'm doing a little assessing now as to where we go from here. I applied for a teaching certificate while applying for the teaching job. The certificate would be good for one year and would only be renewed if I did some more coursework to update my standing. There's also the thought of seminary and the possibility that things will begin to move now that we're in Sioux Falls. I figure I have just under a year to see where things seem to be taking us and to make some decisions about what to pursue. I don't have any leanings in any particular direction at this point.

In other news, it looks like I'll be able to get some time off next month so that we can go back to Indiana and pack up our furniture so that we can stop eating off of our one TV tray, sleeping on air mattresses and using cardboard as our most prominent decorating feature. We're getting settled in a bit, but having more of our furniture and such here will definitely give it more of a sense of "home." The biggest adjustment for me has been the constant concern for how our activities impact our upstairs neighbor. It's a concern we've not had to deal with in a long, long time and with a one year old, it's somewhat out of our hands. The neighbor seems very nice and we're looking forward to getting to know her a little more over time. Her schedule and mine make it so that the weekends are about the only time that I might see her, so it's probably up to Amy and the kids to see that relationship happen.

Speaking of relationships, I am really enjoying my team at work. We are a varied lot, but I'm getting to know them little by little and am finding great opportunity to get past first impressions and am truly coming to care for them. We've also had a better chance to get to know some of the people at church and are beginning to feel that we might actually be a part of it instead of being the new kids. The next few months should find us getting a little more involved and a little more ingrained into the life of the church, which again will return us to some semblance of normalcy.

So, even though some things could be better, we're together, we're healthy and we're finding places that we belong.