Summer turns to Fall

In my last post I wrote about this "summer season" in my life. A season that feels a little like an in between season, a season of doubts, uncertainty, but most importantly, trusting and relying on God. The past couple of weeks, this season has kicked into high gear! It's been a whirlwind of ups, downs, excitement, and everything in between. I won't go into all the crazy details (though if you want to hear them and you're local, I'd love to get coffee or something and share) but here's a little bit of a rundown.

JOB
Some of you may be aware that I have actively looking for a new job. I really enjoyed my job at the school, but I knew it was time to move on. I knew I was probably only going to be a teaching assistant for a couple of years, at which point I would decide if I wanted to pursue alternative certification and have my own classroom or move on. I love teachers and what they do, but through my experiences, and a lot of prayer, I knew it was not the path I wanted to pursue. I was not really sure what I wanted to do so I was applying for all kinds of jobs, praying that God would open and close the right doors. A couple of weeks ago, both of those things happened in one whirlwind of a day. Like I said, it's kind of a crazy and long story. The short story is I had three different interviews with a doctor's office for a medical receptionist job and I was pretty convinced I was going to be given the job. About a week and a half ago, I discovered they had gone with someone else. I was disappointed but I knew that I had narrowed down what I wanted to do, I wanted to go back to the medical field. I started looking online and found a couple of places to apply to and within eight hours had a phone call, interview, and job offer from an optometry office! I woke up with a rejection, and ended the day with a job. It was definitely an emotional roller coaster! When I started my job hunt, I did not think that I wanted to go back into the optometry world, but I realized I miss it and it became apparent that this is exactly the route God has for me.

Book
While I was looking for jobs, I was also working on a semi-secret project. A good friend of mine was having a baby and I decided to see if I could write a children's book for her and the baby. I can't exactly tell you why I decided this, it was just something I felt God nudging me toward. I'm no illustrator, but my roommate/best friend is a graphic designer and is good with layouts and design. She was able to manipulate pictures and make them look like drawings to go with the words, and suddenly we had a book! My awesome publisher friend offered to print/publish it for us. So, I am officially a published author! If you had told me that my first book published would be a children's book I wouldn't have believed you, but I'm super excited about it! It's called What Did God Make? and it's about creation. I've included the link to order it at the end of this post if you want to order for a child in your life. This was also super fun because it was such a collaborative project. I love getting to work with other creative people on projects, and I also loved seeing the joy on my friends' faces when we gave them the book written with their child in mind. 
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I was going to end this post with a reflection about how we praise God in both the exciting and challenging times, but it started to get super long, so I'll continue those thoughts in a separate post. 

Check out my children's book What Did God Make here: www.beecreativeinc.com/store/

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