Empty Head, Full Heart

I know I am modifying the tag line from Friday Night Lights, but this is the best way to summarize what is going on in our world right now.  This week was the finale to a very very very long journey for my husband...he was offered a job as a firefighter yesterday!!!  Can I get an AMEN, a WHAT-WHAT, a YEEHAW, and a PRAISE THE LORD?!?

Forgive me as I rehash this, but I am feeling the need.  When I was 7 months pregnant Rob came home without a job.  He was a financial analyst, and when the market tanked-so did the need for his job.  We know the layoff was coming, but it still hurt on so many levels when it actually happened.  Rob is a man with a plan, so when he came to me with a plan that started off with "Please hear me through, I need to say this," I knew I needed to listen.  I knew he was unhappy with his career.  His frustration level was at an all time high in fact, but like so many of us he felt stuck by finances and lack of options.  So when we were dealt the unemployment card, Rob took advantage of the opportunity.  He told me that he wanted to work toward the goal of being a firefighter/paramedic, and I knew in my heart that is what he always wanted to do.  The tricky thing with this goal is that it is not like a college degree in that if you work really hard and apply yourself you will complete your goal in X amount of time and get a piece of paper to congratulate yourself on the accomplishment.  This goal was going to be a year of putting himself through  fire school and paramedic school without the guarantee of a fire job-ever.  In fact the chance of it not working out was far greater than it ever actually working out.  He was jumping in feet first without the guarantee of ever swimming.

I knew that many people applied to be firefighters, but I had NO IDEA how many actually applied.  For example, Rob tested for the City of Fort Worth.  2,700 people took the test.  They only hired 3 people.   Needless to say, Robs 96% on the test still put him 317 on the list, after the tiebreaker lottery system was applied, and he still did not come close.  Rob tested for the City of Irving and over 800 applicants tested, and after the written/physical/polygraph he was ranked #11.  That is in the top 1%, and the unfortunate thing is it still was not good enough.  They were only hiring 3.  Close but not close enough.

After 2 years of this, I was having a hard time encouraging him to get back up on that horse and keep trying.  To be honest, I was getting weary.  At what point do you start to nudge your husband toward a new goal?  I wasn't to that point yet, but everyday pushed me closer and closer.  He was hired on last January as a paramedic which I know he enjoyed, but being a LPC was never the final goal.  That job gave him the burst of energy he needed to carry on.  He had no idea how much he would actually like working in that kind of stress.  I never once heard him complain about his job.  He may have mentioned the audacity of what people do to themselves, but he still enjoyed the actual task of helping them.

Now that I have made this incredibly long winded I will try to wrap this up.  The Deputy Chief called him a month ago and invited him to the Battalion Chiefs interview, then the polygraph test, then the psychological evel, and finally the medical evaluation (all of this after already having done the written, physical test, and panel interview).  They made his official start date January 2nd.  It almost doesn't seem real.

Rob is walking a little taller today.  Not just figuratively-he has a spring in his step, and I am sitting here crying crocodile tears as I am writing this.  He has worked so hard-so very very hard for this.  I would have given up by now.  I am so very happy I married such a persistent man.  One day if our sons are ever floundering about a goal, I know that Rob will be able to speak to them from a position of understanding. While E is too small to remember this and Andrew will only ever know his father as a firefighter, I hope that one day they will grasp what their father was able to do when he was 30.  He convinced his wife that he needed to pursue his passion and the darn plan actually worked!!!

I AM SO HAPPY!

On a side note, I wrapped up my chemistry class and took my exam for work that I had to pass in order to keep my new job.  I completed them both with flying colors which explains why my brain is empty.  I am one emotionally and mentally drained mama.  Happy but drained.