Through this latest bit of The Benson Saga we have been reconnecting with many friends we haven’t seen in a while – some in a LONG while! My friend Tracy had a brilliant idea – another reason I miss her – that I put it on my blog how we ended up in Texas, rather than responding to each inquiry individually. Although cut-and-paste in the e-mail would work! =) But this is less time consuming.

Setting the Stage
February 2006 Daniel was born – he was a sweet, cranky baby. He was c-section and they could hear him screaming long before he was removed. All the nurses on the maternity ward knew when it was Daniel – you could hear him down the hall – and don’t think it got any better when we headed home. He cried and screamed nearly 24 hrs a day, only slept very short periods of time and had big issues eating. Earlier that year Eric had taken a new position with the mortgage company he had started working for in 2002. With the new position he could work from home some of the time when he was not traveling. They didn’t require a lot of travel and we were thrilled with the new arrangement. A few months later the company was ‘acquired’. It was a summer of the unknown. Whether or not he would keep his job as they sorted out who would be merged into the new company and what exactly that would look like. One of the biggest upsets was the cut in pay – the new company did offer him a position, but at HALF the salary he was making before – ouch! At the time Eric felt it best to ride out the pains of the merger to be triumphant on the other side. Ultimately a good decision as we look back over the last two years, but certainly not an easy road. He was able to keep his seniority and a few other things that made it worth it for him to stay there and see what happened. The biggest change was that this company had him on the road EVERY week! SO here I was with a 4 year old little girl (I will blog about sweet Emily later) and a screaming infant and a husband who was lucky to be home for 48 hours on the weekend – often less than that. This went on for months while we tried to figure out if we could afford to stay in our house with the extra expenses of baby 2 and the dramatic cut in pay. The answer was a blaring NO – but how do I put the house on the market, when I can’t even get a shower in? I didn’t know – so I resorted to brownies. LOTS of Them! They were my comfort food. And I needed A LOT of comfort in those crazy days! =)

By the late fall of 2006 the new company was asking Eric to take a position at their corporate headquarters in San Diego. It would nearly eliminate his travel and we could be a family again. They would not raise his base salary, but made promises of bonuses and promotions if he made the move. We never thought we would leave the Northwest, especially now that we had kids and all of our family was within an hour of each other, but after much prayer and deliberation we made the leap. We had one fiasco after the other trying to sell the house – like a tree coming through the roof the weekend the For Sale sign was up! Was this a sign we weren’t supposed to go through with it – or a hurry yourself up and get out of here warning?!

Anyway, we ended up selling our home in Vancouver and heading down to San Diego the weekend after Daniel turned One. We were excited to be together as a family and were looking forward to enjoying the southern California weather and beaches. Three days after we signed the lease on our apartment, the mortgage industry crashed. All bonuses and promotions were halted until things ‘leveled out’. Ha! That left us in an expensive area with no money and wondering if we had heard God correctly. Yes, we still felt strongly that we were to be there so we made the best of it. And God did provide. Every time we thought we couldn’t make it one more day, something would come through, whether it was a tax return or a reimbursement check we were able to plug along. Bottom line was that San Diego is beautiful and we needed to just enjoy being there as a family for the time being! The area offered a lot of recreation opportunities for Emily (who is in a wheelchair) and it was SO wonderful to see her involved in sports and being able to be more independent.

Fast forward to August 2007 (are you keeping up with me?). 1st day of Kindergarten, I am dropping Emily off – nervously- at public school, taking the 1st day pictures, and I get a phone call from Eric. His company just shut down the entire retail division. 1600 laid off. Eric one of them. OK God. Now what. Emily just started school. We are at a church we love. We are already broke. Our family is 2 states away. What else do you want from us? More trust. More faith. OK. Eric and I still felt we were being told to stay put. Eric put his full time energy into searching for a new job – obviously – and although he was open to positions outside of the area, his main focus was San Diego. He had many interviews -feeling really good about so many and yet nothing was coming through. It was easy for us to say ‘the right one just hasn’t come yet’ and quite another thing to try and not FREAK OUT about our situation. But it was good for Eric to spend some one on one time with Daniel – especially since he had basically missed 8 months of his life and I’m sure there were other pluses, I just can’t recall them at the moment =)

Finally, in October, an offer came in to work in the IT department of the same company that laid him off. Are you crazy??? Why would he go back there? But the reality of the fact that unemployment was only enough to cover our rent and we were emptying any account/resource we had to pay cobra (health insurance) and taking change from the kids piggy banks to buy milk…let’s just say that desperate times call for desperate measures! Now, I want to be certain to let you know that our parents were helping us out as well, but we never let them know exactly how dire our circumstances were. Mostly a Pride issue (something I think has been a theme in this journey because any remainder of it is currently being beaten out of us!)but also if they really knew how bad it was they probably would have flown down and taken the kids back with them! And given us lectures at length about why we needed to high tail it back home. But that is NOT what we were supposed to be doing, so we endured and trusted -most of the time =)
Eric took the IT position with their full understanding that there was an offer from another company he was still holding out for and that if it came through, he would be out of there. They told him that it didn’t matter how long he was there, they wanted him back. Praise God! They started him right away so we would have health insurance through the company Nov 1st. That alone was worth the risk – even though I was still having my reservations. He started back to work on Thursday, October 17th. In the wee hours of Monday, October 21st we fled our home amidst the flames of the San Diego ‘Wild’ Fires.
Check in for Part 2 later!