I am not sure if it was my adventurous upbringing or if it was a severe case of cabin fever. But whatever it was we found ourselves putting our beloved house up for rent. Painting, cleaning, packing and moving almost everything into storage.
One night before bed while talking to my husband Josh, I said we should just get away and go to California. Jokingly he said, “Yea, and I could get a job as a travel nurse”. Oh yeah I said with great enthusing. Thinking his joke would blow over by morning he rolled over and went to sleep. Much to his surprise it did not blow over. In fact I stayed up most of the night researching travel nurse agencies and all the possibilities of places we could explore. By morning I had already picked the company, state, and a narrowed selection of cities to begin our journey. Josh awoke to a pumped wife who had the online application up and ready to be filled out. A little disappointed his “joke” did not blow over and he was now staring down the opportunity of a life time. Challenged by his reserved upbringing he thought of any excuse to avoid the situation. He reminded me that we had three small daughters, a house, church, a great job, and all our family living by us.”
At that moment all I could see was the good in travel. We would miss family but half of the time we were all so busy anyway it was hard to get together as much as we liked. The house could be rented out. I could take care of that. I could pack up the house. We could paint the house and cover over all the kids hand prints. I told him there could be no harm in applying.
We were not confidant. Actually we were very timid about the whole thing. What if we hated it! What if Josh was too stressed going from hospital to hospital? How would the girls handle all of this? How would our family take it? What if the travel nursing agency did not pay as well as it made it sound? What if, what if…
I can remember us using the word if for months after this process started. “If we go traveling…” Until one day talking with my sister in law Desiree and my brother Michael about it.
My brother was shocked to hear this news. He questioned his wife why she did not tell him before. And her response was the last pivotal push I needed to change my “if we go” to “when we go”. She said “Oh, their not really going to go.”
And that was that.
Trails of Ever After 