Workin' 9-5....or not

We've been talking a lot recently about how to make Dan's schedule work best for our family. He actually doesn't work an insane number of hours (we calculated <40/week when averaged out), but he works nights, weekends, and holidays and the rest of the world is organized around a M-F 9-5 lifestyle. This has been really hard for me - I hate it when he works on the weekend, and doing dinnertime/bedtime alone is sometimes a lot at the end of the day! He loves the emergency room environment though, and it is nice having 3-4 days off at a time...so rather than looking for a new job, we've been brainstorming things we can do to make it work better.

As part of this we wanted to get some input from people who have been where we are. Amazingly, at almost the same time Daniel became interested in the PA profession he found out his new college bible study leader was an emergency medicine PA. John, and his wife Sharon, have been great friends and mentors for Dan (and now me too) for over ten years now. We were able to spend about 48 hours with them last month and it was great. They are just the kind of people that are refreshing and encouraging to be around, and it was especially great to get their input into our circumstances since they've been there too.

They didn't have a lot of suggestions for things we could change, but said we're thinking about the right things. Things we're considering are: setting up a regular sitter to come one morning a week, trying to be better about planning out our days in advance, seeing if Daniel can get more Sundays off to go to church regularly, figuring out a way for us make exercise a priority. Sharon helped us realize that some of our stress doesn't necessarily come from Dan's schedule, but from having a 2 year old and a 1 year old...no matter what our work situation was, life would be crazy right now, but that it's for a season. The next season won't necessarily be easier, but it will be different. It's easy to think the grass would be greener if Daniel had a 'normal' schedule, but it's not necessarily true - there would just be different challenges.

Also, as Dan told John about his job, John was really impressed with the experience Dan is getting, the way the docs run the group, and the compensation/benefits...what we've started to take for granted, he reminded us is really a pretty sweet deal! I mean really - Dan works half the days of the month and makes enough for us to live on one income - pretty amazing gig!

It was also the first time for us to get to introduce John and Sharon to the kids. They have 4 grown boys, and I think they really enjoyed having some little ones around. Amongst all the serious talk, we had some fun too. The first morning the guys went out fishing and the women and kids headed to a really cool playground. We also took some walks down to the dock, ate yummy food, and visited the beach (St. George Island) where Daniel and I first met!

All in all, it was a great trip. We were challenged and encouraged by John and Sharon's generosity, servant hearts, and loving way of living out their faith in their neighborhood.