Home Sweet Home

WE ARE STAYING.
What a weekend this has been for the Hublers. Many don't know, but Mikey was offered a job promotion this last Friday, to be a bank President. Sounds yummy, eh? Well, the hitch was is that it would require our family to relocate to Miami. No, not Florida.....Miami Oklahoma that is! There was a lot of incentive. Professional movers to move all our crap, a substantial increase in salary, and of course, the nice title of President to put with his name. Well, to make an educated decision, we quickly packed up the kids, dropped the schnauzer off at a babysitter, spent way too much money filling the Tahoe with gas, and took the 3+ hour drive up to Miami for the weekend. We were totally gung-ho about this job, and excited to see how we "felt" when we got there. What we found there was Indian Casinos, stockyards, pastures, farms....and flood damage from July '07, and price inflated real estate due to the citizens of Picher (town destroyed by tornado a few weeks ago) relocating to Miami. On a positive note, the landscape was BEAUTIFUL. So green, so pretty. And the little ward in Miami was just so sweet. A congregation of about 90 people, and they were so friendly and wanted to keep us.
We thought, we prayed, we agonized. We made lists of pro's and con's of taking the job. We agonized some more and lost a lot of sleep. It sounded so good (the offer) but could we be happy there as a family and was it where the Lord intended for us to be? Was it worth leaving all we had here in Norman (school, doctors, dentists, my midwife, OU FOOTBALL), and uprooting our family to start all over again. Selling our current house, oh MY what a headache! I do think my husband aged an extra decade in the past 72 hours as he went back and forth between "We can do this, let's just take the job, I know we can make it happen" to "I'm happy here in my job, I don't know if I'd be happy there or if it is the best place to take our family right now". This has been SO SO HARD! And we never felt for certain that we received an answer to our prayers. And that has been a very difficult thing to deal with. We thought we would get a very concrete answer YES, or NO. It has been a gray area of uncertainty.
We decided today to turn down the job offer. To the surprise of many of Michael's colleagues who thought that he would be perfect for the promotion and opportunity.
But what it comes down to, is it's not always all about the money, or the title, or the promotion. In the end, we felt like it just wasn't the right fit for our family, and that there was reason for us to stay here. And there was a certain amount of satisfaction that came with making the decision to stay. We have faith that the Lord will take care of us, and he will always put us where he needs us when he needs us there. And, not to brag, but my hubby's a pretty darn good banker, and I KNOW he is valuable to his company and more opportunities WILL come his way. So, you folks here in Norman will have to deal with the Hubler family hangin' around a little longer.