Beyond "Fine"

I try not to get too personal on a public blog, but I'm going to risk being a little transparent today. As I mentioned on my last blog post, my husband lost his full time job, and I lost 1.5 of my 3 very part time jobs. People continue to show concern for us and keep asking us how we are doing, and my answer is usually "fine" because I don't feel like rehashing and bursting into tears every time someone asks. So, this blog is an attempt to answer that question more fully.

First of all, I feel that we were incredibly blessed to be a part of Inflammable. Nate was given an opportunity early on in the company to learn as he worked, which is not something he would likely have been able to do working for any other company in the IT field. We are so thankful to God and to my brother, especially, for giving this opportunity to us. I know Nate worked very hard to earn the trust they placed in him, and knowing him, I have to believe he earned it. People who know Nate and have worked with him know that he is a very hard worker. I'm beyond proud of him.

The unfortunate flip-side of the blessing of Nate learning as he worked is this: the knowledge Nate has is so very specialized, he is not as hire-able or employable as we would like. If you are not familiar with the field of IT, this means that he is extremely well-versed in one small area of the field and his knowledge of the rest is rather limited. It's like a high school physics teacher being asked to teach fourth grade. He just isn't qualified to do that. He can freaking "teach physics" but if there is nobody looking to hire a "physics teacher" and everyone wants a "fourth grade teacher", he just isn't super employable right now. So, in a way, we are back at square one when it comes to applying for new jobs. All is not hopeless, though, and I fully believe good will come of this. The last two years have not been in vain, and God will use this situation to his glory. Who knows? Maybe he will be rehired again in a few weeks and all of this will have been a giant uncertain vacation from work. Or maybe this is the beginning of a long arduous period of patience and trust. We shall see.

Secondly, to continue answering the "how are you doing" question, we are learning a lot about trust. This element is seemingly more complex than we initially expected. Like I mentioned in my previous post, the reasons for the closing of the company are a combination of things we know and can't talk about as well as a great many things we don't know about. That being said, it's understandable that there is an element of trusting in the unknown decisions of others, which we are learning is an incredibly difficult position to be put in. That's where we are right now. It's complex because we do trust the leadership of Inflammable, very much. If we didn't fully trust them and God, we would be much more angry and would definitely be feeling bitterness in the wake of this tragedy. We do not blame them at all nor do we feel bitterness, but we still are feeling grief and hurt. The hurt was inadvertent, of course, but it was still hurt.

I imagine it's like being a passenger on a car (well, more likely a bus with 30 other passengers) that is involved in a collision with another vehicle. You aren't driving the bus or making the decisions. You probably are minding your own business and not paying attention to the bad decisions of the cars around you. When the bus you are in gets hit and totaled and you wind up injured and in the hospital, you are still hurt, even though you knew the bus driver personally and trusted him to give you safe passage. In this instance, the driver came out of the crash with minor personal injuries, but had to deal with the loss of their property, the insurance claims, the emotional trauma of being responsible for a great many other lives, and the heartache of the injury to the passengers in the bus accident that he didn't cause but still feels responsible for. But we, as the injured passengers, have a road of recovery ahead of us. We placed our trust in an employer, just like anyone does at any job, and when it closed, that trust was broken and that left us feeling hurt. So these past few days, that injury hurts. It just does. We know that wound will heal, but right now, it just hurts. And that's okay.

Thirdly and lastly (for now), we are learning about thankfulness. Every year for the past several years, I participated in the 30 Days of Thankfulness posts on Facebook. I will likely sound like a hipster when I say I was doing it before it was cool, but since my college friends and I really did have Facebook accounts before it was cool, I guess it's okay. :) Anyway, I once heard the quote that there is always something to be thankful for, and we are learning one day at a time, what that means for us right now.

We have said over and over that we are thankful for God bringing Dave Ramsey and FPU into our lives at a time when we had hit a financial rock bottom and were receptive to it. But I am also thankful for a spouse (eww, I hate that word...it rhymes with blouse, and those words just sound gross) er, husband who was as open to it as I am and who I can fully trust to communicate with me on financial matters. We have been a fairly open book about our finances because we hope God can (bahaha, can? Of course He can.) will use our experience to help others as well as to serve as accountability for us. Now that we have this other gaping emotional wound, it would be easy for us to give up on our budgeting and say it was all for nothing, but that would be a lie. It has been a huge blessing. We would have almost $500 in extra bills per month that we would be wondering how we were going to be able to pay. Instead, we have rent, cost of living expenses (food, gas, phones, etc.), utilities, and one single debt left to pay. All of our other expenses that we regularly budget for can be cut right out until we have jobs. Even though our rent is a doozy and it would be wonderful to live in a paid for house, the rest of it is a huge relief. We do still have that one last debt, so we aren't yet on Baby Step 3. Baby Step 3 exists for such a time as this, and the peace we would have with that fully funded emergency fund of 3-6 months of expenses, if we were on that step, would be incredible. That's why Baby Step 3 is part of the plan...because job lay offs happen. We keep trying to remind ourselves that this too shall pass and that one day, we will be there. And we will.

We are also thankful for this time we have been given to be together. With all of my whining and complaining over the past few years about being apart while Nate traveled and then again while he worked nights, I never would have wished for a job lay off just so that we could have more time together. But sometimes, you've got to roll with the punches. And we're trying to do just that by enjoying the quality time. My top love language is quality time (my second, if you are curious, is words of affirmation). So I'm getting a rather heavy dose of quality time all at once. We had some Groupon credit at a local movie theater, so today we took advantage of that and went to see The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. I'm soooo glad we saved that credit because there is no way we would spend any of our precious money to go see a movie right now, and it was just what the doctor ordered. I know it hasn't received the best reviews, but I loved it. Legolas is my favorite Lord of the Rings character, though I do really like all of the characters, and he had a larger part in this movie than he did in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I would totally recommend it so long as you know they added filler because they had too much content for two movies but not enough for three. Also, the end is kind of a cliffhanger, and we have to wait a whole year to see the resolution. So you need to keep that in mind. Anyway, it was a welcome distraction from this past week of stress.

Another thing for which we are thankful actually hits on the aforementioned integrity of the leadership of Inflammable, and that is that when Nate received his final paycheck, they paid him for the rest of his paid vacation days that he was going to be taking next week. We never in a million years expected them to do that, even though to some that might have been a given, and we are overwhelmed beyond measure and filled with gratitude for that extra almost two weeks worth of hours we never would have expected them to pay him for.

In closing, this last week has been filled with waves of stress and calm, but I have to be honest and say the last two days have been the hardest. Just like with any situation that requires grief and healing, we have gone through periods of frustration, stress, anger, peace, sadness, feeling sick, etc. Nate and I aren't alone in this, yet we are in a unique situation. We would love for you to continue to keep us in your prayers.

El Fin: An Abrupt End to 2013 and To This Chapter of Our Lives

Well, I've been meaning to start blogging again, but I never intended it to resume like this. It is with a very heavy heart that I share that as of yesterday, Nate, my brother, sister-in-law, several friends, and dozens of other employees I don't actually know, lost their jobs when Inflammable, my brother's company, was forced to close its doors. There are many reasons for the closing, some of which I don't even know and none of which I can elaborate about on this public blog, but I will say that my brother and the board of directors of the company are not at fault and did everything in their power to avoid this. There was just no other choice. Rather than ask all the "why" questions that everyone naturally wants to ask but which aren't ever really helpful or very comforting anyway, I would prefer to dwell on the memories, both good and bad, to process and grieve the loss of something we all held so dear, and to focus on our next steps.

It's still surreal. I remember when Inflammable was a brand new idea. Back in 2008, my brother and his best friend, Joshua, hired me to design a logo for "Inflammable." (In fact, I still have my idea sketches, all the early rough drafts, and all of the various versions saved on my computer.) To my knowledge, Andrew was the only employee for a long time. Then fast forward about 5 years, when Nate and I went on a road trip to help Andrew land a client, and then, just like that, Nate was hired full time by Inflammable. Andrew was also now at Inflammable full time, and he couldn't hire employees fast enough. Joshua and his family moved down here a few months later when he was hired on full time. The company grew like crazy, and it was exciting. Some people worried it would grow faster than it should and that would be its downfall, but it wasn't. We knew God was blessing Inflammable for whatever reason, and it was amazing to watch.

Nate traveled a lot for about a year, and we were apart SO MUCH. It was difficult, but we knew he was gaining some amazing job experience. It helped to know that it was helping us pay off our debt as fast as possible (we became big Dave Ramsey fans in case you missed that memo). We knew the separation wouldn't last forever. Then he transitioned to a local position at the company but had to work nights. I HATED that. He actually rather enjoyed the work, but I thought it was almost worse than when he traveled because even when he was off, he was sleeping when I was awake and vice versa. We hardly saw each other. But, it was more job experience that we knew would make Nate more valuable to the company and to future employers, so we hung in there. I would have expected Nate to work there another 10 years at least, but that was not to be so.

Soon Inflammable had the biggest suite in the office building. I never could get used to seeing that logo I designed so many years prior on the giant sign out in front of this super tall office building. They asked me to clean some of the offices for them, which I definitely had the experience to do after having cleaned at Somerset Beach Campground several years ago. :) If you would have told me that the last time I was there to clean would, in fact, be the last time I would ever clean for Inflammable, I wouldn't have believed you.

The staff Christmas party was scheduled to be less than a week from today, and we were so excited that there were going to be so many employees and their FAMILIES there. Last year, there were probably about 20 in attendance which included employees and their spouses, but the Christmas party the year before that was attended by just Andrew, Valerie, Ellie, Nate, me, and one other employee. That's it - six, including the baby! No one else worked there yet. So this year was going to be the biggest yet with probably 30 families attending, if I had to guess, and Valerie worked so hard to plan it for us. I suppose some of us could go out for dinner anyway, but none of us feels much like celebrating now.

It's hard to remember all of these little things that are now gone, but it's also important to note that when I say "the company closed", it's not as black and white as it sounds. It's not so easy to dismiss as tossing away a bit of junk mail. There were real people and real life was happening under the name Inflammable. There were so many hard days of work and so many wonderful ones that I don't even know about since I wasn't even technically an employee, but these are just the instances I witnessed and remember - both the good and the difficult ones. Inflammable wasn't our company, I mean Nate and I weren't the owners, but we felt so proud of this company since both of us were involved to some degree even from early on. I was, and still am, so proud of what my brother, sister-in-law, and Joshua did with that company. Excuse the cliche, but they poured their heart and soul into growing this company, and they did a dang fine job of it, too.

It's just so hard to say goodbye.
I can't believe that all of that is gone and this phase is over. 

So, now we are left to pick up the pieces. Nate and I have been through unemployment before, but never both of us at the same time. As I mentioned, I used to clean for Inflammable as well as babysit a few days a week so that Valerie could do HR, so this means that we no longer have that income either. I do not know what we would do if we hadn't started budgeting like Dave Ramsey suggests and if we hadn't taken FPU and started the debt snowball. I'm not going to get on my soapbox about it right now, but we only have one additional debt payment next to our Four Walls: rent, utilities, transportation, and food. I wish we had our fully funded emergency fund in place of 3-6 months expenses so that we didn't have to cancel our Netflix, cable, and all of those extra unnecessary things, but I am so thankful that we are where we are financially. It's going to be a stressful time regardless, but we are able to keep our wits about us and construct a plan while we navigate these waves of grief and various other emotions. I'm thankful that I have a whole month or so of safety (because of our baby emergency fund and our budgeting) before I really start to freak out. :D And an extra month is plenty of time to find at least a basic job, or so we hope. *fingers crossed*

So, if you would, please be in prayer for my brother and his family, Joshua and his family, my family, as well as all of the other employees. None of us ever expected to go into Christmas unemployed. Please pray that everyone is able to make a smooth and swift transition to wherever they are to be employed next and that all of us would have peace that God knows the future and that there is always hope.

Also, thanks for all of you who venture over to my rarely updated blog. I will try to make sure the next time I post, it won't be quite so catastrophic or newsy. ;)