Something strange happened on the last couple of Saturdays. As we sipped our morning tea and coffee (me tea, Tim coffee) Tim asked, ‘What shall we do today?’ Not such an unusual question, but Saturdays are not often like that for us. For the past I don’t know how long Tim has worked at the weekend to keep us afloat, just so we can get by. I work Saturdays sometimes too, but that’s the nature of working in a library. Both working in the week and the weekends is not a great thing for family life or indeed our relationship. It’s been a strain.

Every year since we arrived in Canada the coming of Christmas means lay off time for Tim at work. It’s just the way it is in the roofing business with winters here being what they are. It’s not the best Christmas present though, and claiming Employment insurance every year for a few months is not ideal.

No need to get the violins out yet though. God provides and we survive.

This year it meant a decision – and we knew the decision had to be made by Christmas. A whole culmination of things pointed to Tim going it alone. It takes a lot to make him move on and make a change. Painful at times. It’s nothing short of a miracle that we made the decision to move here and carried it through. He is a good employee, loyal to a fault, and hard working. The facts were staring at him in the face though in this case. Roofing is physical, hard work and he can’t do it forever, and being an employee in New Brunswick in the roofing business means low wages. Added to that was the growing realization that he could do this, it might just work – and many people saying, ‘Tim when are you going to have your own business?!’

It’s one of those things he has dreamed of for a while, but never done. After a lot of praying, talking and researching, we decided to go for it in the new year. One factor that has helped to go for it now is that I’m working full time hours temporarily which takes a little of the pressure off. Tim got quite emotional when he told his boss he was leaving. After all, that job enabled us to get visas to come here and his boss and his wife helped us out a lot. It’s hard to leave the guys he’s worked with and got to know as well. We’re grateful for the work Tim has had over the past six years. It’s as close to crying as he has come in years.

(I can’t imagine, I well up at any little thing – I cried all the way through watching Little Women again at Christmas, making a puddle of tears on the jigsaw puzzle I was doing. It’s my go to movie for a good cry, Little Women. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s the whole family, sisters, writing and love thing all bundled up into one story.)

So now we are in the thick of it – registering a business name, getting all the paperwork sorted and just getting going. It’s a risk and an adventure, scary and exciting. We hope and pray that there will be enough work. We hope that it will mean that Tim has some Saturdays off. We hope that maybe he’ll be able to take vacation time so we can go on a family holiday at some point instead of me going it alone with the kids. We know it won’t be easy, it may be harder for a while, but when Tim messaged me a few days ago saying that he was working while listening to Jeremy Vine on BBC Radio 2 on his cellphone, I knew he must be feeling good.

Back in 2012 when Tim and I were both in England together, we joined Jubilee Community Church, our home church in England, for the Sunday morning meeting. Tim had just landed and joined us as he could only come for a week. That morning our friend Pete who was sitting in front of us turned around and said to us that he had a picture in his mind of the six jars that Jesus had filled with water which he then turned into wine. He prophesied that for us the six jars meant six years and after that there’d be something different. That word has hovered in the back of our minds – and now we have been here in Fredericton six years. At the time we thought it meant that we’d be moving somewhere else, but this new direction may well be it. When we were being prayed for just recently one of the elders here, Gary, had the words, ‘Straight ahead!’ He didn’t know that we’d been talking about the business all that week. It seemed like God was pushing us, encouraging us, mainly Tim, to get on with it.

There are also some other things that we’re involved with that are pretty exciting and I think part of this new thing. I’ll write about that in another post.

For now it’s time to get our heads down and get on with it with hope in our hearts for 2016. Whatever happens we’re trusting God for the future.

Happy New Year!

photo credit: Clay Bottles via photopin (license)