As our time at the Armes has been nearing a close, Cassie and I have been trying to figure out where we’ll be going next. And it looks like the answer is back to VA for a time.
We knew our time at the Armes was up in early December when their kids all came home for Christmas, and we’d been planning for that by looking for ways to stay in Los Angeles – or Pasadena. We’d been getting plugged into church and PIHOP and even had a lead on some short-term housing there, so things were looking up.
For finances, Cassie had applied at Starbucks, which seemed like the surest part of the process – she’d worked there for years, had always gotten high marks as an employee, and it’s just the sort of job where they’re pretty always hiring if you’re a good enough hire. Because it seemed like the surest part of the process, we were using it as kind of a signal flag; God’s been guiding us a lot using closed doors, and we figured if he wanted us to not stay in LA, closing the door on Starbucks seemed like a good way to do it.
(I think you can guess where this is going, but I’m going to continue anyway.)
The other day, Cassie and I were talking about things like what’s coming next, and she mentioned off-handed how my sister had offered to let us stay in her guest room for a while. I’d been there when my sister had offered, but for some reason, Cassie saying it this time, I was like, “Oh, I bet that’s gonna happen. You’re not going to get the Starbucks job and we’ll end up crashing with her next.” Maybe an hour later, Cassie heard back from Starbucks that they’d done the interviews wrong, asked her the wrong questions (they’d interviewed her as if she was applying to be a barista instead of a shift lead), and actually with her availability (she doesn’t work on Sundays) it doesn’t look like it’s going to work out.
So we messaged my sister and asked her how serious she’d been about letting us stay with her, and could she please confirm with her husband that it’s cool for us to stay with them for a while. She said their guest room is free for a month, starting right when we needed it to be free! So that’s where we’ll be, starting in about a week.
To get ahead of some of the questions: no, we have no idea where we’ll be going afterwards. God has been giving us the direction we need only and exactly when we need it, and we don’t need to know where we’re going next yet, so. If it’s elsewhere in Virginia, I don’t know that we’ll know until a couple days beforehand; if it’s somewhere we have to fly to, we’ve generally been hearing about it right around the time when we can get the cheapest airfare, 2-3 weeks in advance. Neither of those are certainties or rules, just saying how it’s been working out for us so far.
Cassie and I are both in a really good place right now RE: trusting God’s plan and his timing, so neither of us are too worried about what comes next anyway. We know that it will be good, and we’re excited to see how it plays out!