Keeping in Teutsch

It's still early January, so I can get away with just now doing our 2011 Year in Review...right? Punctuality has never been my strength! :)

I was going to break our year down month-by-month, but I couldn't really think of anything to say for January, so I scratched that idea and decided to just give the highlights in order. Of course, if you've been reading, none of this will be anything new, but I have included a couple of pictures that I haven't posted on here before.

Juliette had her first visit to the dentist; We OD'ed on Mardi Gras parades, and I took a weekend trip to Alexandria to meet up with my friend, Amanda, and sew all weekend!

"Dear God, Why Can't I Have a Baby?" released, in which I shared bits and pieces of our infertility story; We spent Easter 2011 at Matt's parents.

Juliette finished preschool with an end of year brunch. We were given this big binder as a keepsake! (And, as I type this, I can't believe this was less than a year ago...Juliette has grown up so much since then!)

We took a little lake vacation to Degray Lake in Arkansas; Juliette had her first dance revue (cameras weren't allowed, so I have no "action" pictures) and attended worship camp at church, where she had a blast.

Matt and Juliette tagged along with me to New Orleans for the American Library Association conference. They did touristy things. I sat at a table all day. At night, we walked way too far for not-that-great food. Matt and Juliette enjoyed their trip. I did not! :) I shared "my story" with our church via video...possibly the most nerve-wrecking thing I've ever done!

		The much anticipated day arrived, and Juliette started kindergarten. We celebrated with what will become an annual "back to school dinner." We all thought it was pretty cool!

Juliette turned 5. We celebrated A LOT. And, she attended cheer camp at Lafayette High School, which she was not that impressed with. (I'm pretty sure it had to do with having to get up early for it!)

Matt and Juliette went to the annual cemetery cleaning that famous local author Ernest Gaines hosts. Juliette informed him that his picture was on a book at "Mommy's office." He thought she was cute. (This was the best picture Matt could get of them together.) Halloween 2011 saw the end of Juliette's Toy Story character run (hopefully!) and it also saw us with a TON of candy. Anybody want some? (Seriously, we still have it...well the non-chocolate stuff that is!)

We had some non-professional family pictures made for our Christmas cards. (Juliette lost her pants during one picture that didn't get captured. True story!) We celebrated Thanksgiving with Matt's family and spent Thanksgiving weekend in Dallas for our 11th anniversary.

We cheered on the Ragin' Cajuns late into the night at the New Orleans Bowl (where they won in the last 4 seconds of the game by a field goal--it was pretty awesome; in case you are wondering what they are doing with their hands, they are making a U and a L.) And, we celebrated Christmas a little differently this year by staying at home. We went to Matt's parents for New Years...and we were all asleep before the ball even dropped in Times Square (an hour before the countdown here). We're such party animals!

July was promising...new town, new house, new school, new church, new people. Like I said before, we were still living as if nothing had really changed. The money was still there...my security! Oh, I should have seen that lesson coming, huh? It's definitely a tough one to learn.

I'm a control freak...or more like I'm a shadow of the control freak I use to be. In 2005, I learned what happened when you give up control of your body and give all control over to God...you get a long-awaited-for pregnancy at the end of the infertility journey. So, I'd definitely encountered some prior lessons I should have put to use here. Apparently, I'm a little hard headed and have be reminded! Hopefully, I got it this time!

I guess the real mood shift came when the money wasn't there anymore and that was around October. In October we finally closed on our home in West Monroe and crossed off another number on our prayer list and at the same time emptied our savings to get rid of the house. Three down, two to go. Sadly, there was no longer a savings account to be our safety net. Thankfully, we have parents that could be our safety nets, but I tend to be quite prideful (another bad thing) and don't like to ask for help much. I have a sign in my kitchen that says: Faith is not believing that God can--it is knowing that He will. How appropriate it became. I never lost faith...but faith and hope aren't the same and I have to say that there were many times when I felt hopeless.

Some of you reading my blog have never experienced a job loss that lasted very long or had a bad effect on your family...that wiped out your savings, your 401(k), your hope, and what you found to be your security. Tears were frequent around here this past fall from someone who NEVER cries! It was extremely high stress for quite some time. I had been monogramming as much as I could to bring in extra money. We had just enough money between Matt's little income and my unemployment to pay the bills. I had to pray for monogramming work (or parental "gifts") in order to buy food and gas each week. Just like God, though, He never failed to see us through each week. No bill went unpaid, no body too hot or too cold, no mouth unfed. We had to cut back--way back--but we always made it through each week. The lack of money contributed to an amount of stress that I never want to experience again, but it wasn't just about the money. I couldn't get interviews. I couldn't get hired when I got interviews. And after only so much of that, I started feeling worthless and questioning what I was supposed to be doing with my life. Oftentimes, the negative thoughts and feelings running through my mind were worse than the reality of how we were going to eat that week. Those negative thoughts and emotions, fueled with high stress, led to an explosive and depressive Melissa...agitated all the time, quick to anger, easy to upset. It's amazing my family still loves me!

God IS awesome, though, and as you've already read in prior posts, he turned this bad thing in our lives to good. He showed up time and time again on a daily basis and provided for our needs. And he put a smile on my face when I saw just how awesome He is. You see, one particular crying fit came at the beginning of November. I had decided to have a booth in a private school's Christmas craft show in Ruston. I had done a booth there the year before and made $1400...the most I've ever made at a craft show. Since I had been out of work, I had worked on expanding what I could do and had built up quite a bit more samples for Christmas shirts and whatnot. Halloween weekend, though, my machine broke. I wasn't finished with samples (in fact, didn't have nearly enough to even do a show) and ended up not getting my machine back in time to complete the examples--much less in time to actually make it to the show. I was devastated and crying on Matt's shoulder, I said "I don't understand why God would allow this to happen. He knows that I'm just trying to do the one job I have right now and make money that we desperately need." My mom echoed, but like moms do, she said, "There's a reason." As you all know, a week or so later, I got the university job interview and a few weeks after that I got the job offer and had to start the week after Thanksgiving. In hindsight, I'm glad I didn't do the show in Ruston and God knew EXACTLY what he was doing! Had I done the show, I'm sure I would have gotten a lot of orders and would not have been able to complete them in a timely manner (which would have replaced one stress with another).

From the looks of this post, it would appear as if my unemployment consumed the latter half of 2009. In many ways it did. 2009 may always be known as "that" year, but it was also the year that I got to be a stay-at-home mom for 7 months...something I never thought I'd be able to do and something I may never be able to do again. Juliette will only be little once...it was such a joy to get that time with her. She helped daily give me something to smile about and laugh about and to be proud of!

2009 taught me a lot of lessons that I hope to never forget: God is still in control (just like he was in 2005); my security (including financial security) should lie in Him and only Him; He will NEVER leave me nor forsake me and He will provide for all my needs; that the bad things that happen in life can be turned to good; and that when I am weak, He is incredibly strong and many, many steps ahead of me!

I hope no one reading this ever has to go through a situation like we did. If you know someone in a similar situation, please pray for them to have peace, have faith, and have hope, because there will be better days!

We are looking forward to "better days" in 2010 and hope you have a good year too!

Melissa

I've gone back and forth on whether it was really necessary to write a review of 2009, since I'd like to forget quite a bit of this year. In the end, though, I decided that it would be good for me to reflect on it, find the positive in it, and then file it away and move on to a bright and hopeful 2010.

Our 2009 started out with promise. We popped fireworks with Juliette, although she preferred to watch from the window, while Matt popped them for her, since she was scared of the loud noise...just like the dog! We had a spring in our step, hopeful that 2009 would be the year that Matt got accepted to a Ph.D. program and we were making the most money we had ever made thus far. Life was good! In the first few months of 2009, Mom & I took Juliette to Sesame Street Live in Shreveport, Mom and Juliette went with me to Dallas for work for a week in March, Russell and Karen (the in-laws) went with Juliette and me to ride Thomas the Train in Dallas, and we got the long-awaited-for news that Matt was accepted to not one, not even two, but FOUR Ph.D. programs. We knew we were moving somewhere that summer and change was on the horizon.

At work, I felt certain that a big change was coming, but I thought I would be the one heading it up by leaving...not the other way around. Simon & Schuster had bought Howard Books three years before in February 2006. It was no secret that the publisher (the head honcho for you non-publishing people) had a three-year contract and when you couple that with the fact that the economy was tanking and we were an "entertainment" industry that was suffering from the lack of discretionary income among normal book buyers, the outcome just didn't seem good for Howard Books. Due to some other changes that had been taking place over the 3 years since S&S had bought Howard, I thought the outcome would be for Howard to be downsized and moved to NY. I was semi-right. In early February, right about the time of our 3-year anniversary with S&S, corporate announced that a new publisher had been hired for Howard and he would work out of Nashville. They said "nothing was going to change" (famous last words...we'd already seen changes take place from the first time they said that) and that the current publisher would still be publisher...we would just have two publishers. I might not know much about running a multi-million (might even be multi-billion) dollar company, but it doesn't take an economist to tell you that when job layoffs are frequent and the economy is horrible, you don't add another high-ranking boss with a six-figure salary to the equation. The current publishers' days were numbered and I knew it would be just a small amount of time before the news came down from NY.

Almost exactly 4 weeks later, the announcement came the Monday after Easter and it wasn't just the announcement that the original publisher was losing his job, it was the announcement that most of us were losing our jobs...in just 2 1/2 weeks time, at the end of April. I was supposed to be off the week after Easter, since it was Juliette and Matt's Spring Break and I had planned to spend it with them. That Monday morning, I got a call from my boss (who knew he was safe, but wouldn't say, and who was also in the process of boarding a cruise ship for his 20th anniversary celebration) that I needed to be at the office by early afternoon...two HR reps were headed our way and no one was safe. So much for a week bumming around the house, but I figured a few months of bumming around the house was headed my way. I KNEW without a doubt, I wouldn't be one of the positions they were keeping. I also knew that I worked for a MAJOR publisher who was owned by CBS (who is #1 among the networks) and I was hopeful that a nice severance package would be given to us. I also was probably the only one that was actually happy to lose my job. I know, I know, that sounds crazy, but I had hit a wall there. There was no room for advancement and I knew we were going to be moving that summer, so I was excited about the chance to kick back and have some extended time off to be with my family. Getting laid off was actually a God-send because it gave me the opportunity to file for unemployment and have some income while looking for a job. If I would have had to quit Howard, I wouldn't have had a severance (by the way, it stunk) nor unemployment and would have had NO income at all.

May and June were pretty busy months and I actually thought to myself how it was even possible that I had time for a job before! I enrolled Juliette in a 5-week summer session of Kindermusik (music classes for small children), Juliette got to attend VBS while I helped with a 1st grade class, we spent time at my parents just messing around, played in the kiddie pool outside, visited friends, had an early 3rd birthday party for Juliette and of course, packed for moving day. You can see from prior posts (some of the very first ones) that we were able to get an awesome, large rental home for our first year here. (The years after that will be spent in a 2-bedroom apartment on campus.) We moved the first day of July and up until that point, I had spent little time trying to find a job. I figured that once we got moved and unpacked, then I would hit it hard and heavy. In my little mind, I figured I'd have a job within a month or two. I didn't seem to factor in the whole "national job crisis" thing. Also up until this point, we still had savings, Matt was still receiving paychecks from his teaching job from the spring and life was still pretty good.

Early on in 2009, after we established that Matt would be attending ULL and we would be moving to Lafayette, there became a 5-point prayer list for us: 1) Sell our home in West Monroe; 2) Find a rental home that would allow us to keep our dog; 3) Get Juliette in UL's morning preschool; 4) Find Melissa a job; 5) Find good afternoon daycare for Juliette. That's a lot to ask God to do in a summer, huh? The rental home and the preschool fell into place pretty quickly...the others, not so much.

I'm going to break this post into two parts, so come back tomorrow for Part 2 and I'll be sharing a recap of the last 6 months of 2009. I'll be sharing a good bit about the emotional toll that being unemployed took on me, the spiritual lessons that were learned and the new found hope and joy we now have...a lot of stuff I haven't blogged about or even talked about it.