Life changes - job hunting

My husband is losing his job at the end of the year.

How's that for a dramatic statement? It isn't so dismal as all that. For one thing, it's largely voluntary. For the past 6-ish years, he's been a partner in an IT consulting company that works in the medical industry. He and our good friend used to be internal IT staff for a group of medical clinics, but spun off to create their own company under the umbrella of the medical campus where they work. At the time, it seemed like a great opportunity and it had potential. I won't go into all the gory details as to why things are coming to a close. Let's just say, there are reasons - plenty of them. Everyone has agreed to go their separate ways once their contracts are fulfilled.

Fortunately, no relationships are being damaged in the process (part of why they chose to end things now, rather than drawing it out longer). But it does leave us in the odd position of.... needing a job.

The good news is, my husband activated his resume on Monster.com last week and he's had numerous emails and calls - without having actually applied for any jobs yet. It appears his skill set is in high demand at the moment, and that is great. He's also in talks with their largest client about the possibility of being hired as an employee, or somehow continuing the relationship as an independent contractor. I'm not sure what to expect there, since we'd kind of assumed that option wasn't going to be on the table.

The tough part is that we moved out of the major metropolitan area because hubby's job was down here. But there aren't many other jobs where we live - so it was sort of, this job works out or Daddy has to commute. The commute is a big bummer. Traffic is awful. Like, really awful. We used to make fun of our friends for living down here and commuting to the city, but now the hubs might be facing that very scenario. There are possibilities that make it less of a burden (taking the train if it's downtown, partial telecommuting maybe), but it's going to change our lifestyle quite a bit. We're very used to having Daddy 5 minutes away most of the time. Losing that is going to be a bummer.

Mostly we're just trying to not stress (hard) and leave it in God's hands (hard). I believe that God will guide us and help us make the right call for our family. And I have to remind myself often to stop, pray, and listen, rather than getting caught up in the stress of a job change. Whenever we've really trusted in God to guide us, we've never come out wrong, so I have a lot of faith that He will help.

And it's still hard.

It is also a good reminder to be really, really grateful for what we have though. It isn't likely we'll be facing a lengthy unemployment. It's very likely he'll find a good job. It's likely we'll do better financially. All in all, this situation has a lot of potential to be great for my husband's career. It could be so much worse, so much scarier.

So we'll see what happens in the coming weeks and months. I'm not sure what to expect, and I am doing my best to remain open to the possibilities.