Change in Plans

This post will be hecka long, so it you don't want the nitty gritty details, just the basics, here goes:

WE ARE MOVING TO HAWAII!!!

Feel free to stop reading if you don't want to know the how, where or whys of how we got to this point. It's gonna be long.

I recently got back into contact with a friend of mine that I used to work with. She is living in Kauai and she loves it there. She was talking about the slower pace of life, which we so desperately crave, so Spencer and I joked about looking for a job, but obviously did nothing about it.

About a week or so later, my friend then told me about a guy in her ward who does flight nursing, like a nurse in a small plane to transport patients to other islands, that he loved his job and that they were always looking for new people. She asked if we would be interested to find out more and I said sure, there's no harm in looking.

About 3 hours later she said that there was an immediate opening. The guy in her ward had just been promoted and was looking to fill his previous position. We had Spencer send over his resume and he talked to the guy for a little while and it sounded really nice. This guy has worked on Spencer's exact unit that he is currently on with almost the exact amount of ICU time. We have been praying and fasting and both feel very good about this. It has taken several weeks, but Spencer was just offered the job and will be starting in the next week or two, while I will be here trying to sell our house.

What about CRNA school, which has been our goal all along, you ask? Well, the experience here should help if we still apply in the future. It just is such an amazing opportunity and if not now, when? We are both burned out. His schedule will be so much better for us as a family. We will live in the prettiest place on earth. We already have friends there. The pay will equal out the higher cost of living, plus some. I won't work. Doesn't this sound so much better for us? And, while we felt that everything was falling into place for Anesthetist School, the same can apply in this situation. If he didn't do the exact same things he did for that, we couldn't have ended up here at this time.

I don't know what else to put. It's so exciting, exhilarating, thrilling, frightening, heart-wrenching , horrifying thing to do, but I know President Monson made an inpact on me in his talk 'Finding Joy in the Journey'.

He says: "This is our one and only chance at mortal life—here and now. The longer we live, the greater is our realization that it is brief. Opportunities come, and then they are gone. I believe that among the greatest lessons we are to learn in this short sojourn upon the earth are lessons that help us distinguish between what is important and what is not. I plead with you not to let those most important things pass you by as you plan for that illusive and nonexistent future when you will have time to do all that you want to do. Instead, find joy in the journey—now." That's exactly what we will be doing by this move.

I can't explain how hard it will be to leave my clients. I am sure most of them have no clue the impact they have made in my life and how much I truly love them and think of them as family. And yet, I have been feeling an overpowering need to just have time for my family and my children. There is always so much to do without work. Spencer's schedule is terrible and even when he has a day off, it is almost always squished with other days so that it seems like he is never really here. He is sleeping after working or needs to sleep so that he can work that night. It's been so hard on our family. Here we have the opportunity, to grow, to change, to progress and yet come back to the things that are truly important; our family.