A new job, Christmas 2008 and a January Miracle?

I work for a gift company that I've admired for 18 years, but I just started in the spring of 2008. I left a job I loved and that was secure and rewarding. I left to pursue my "dream" job and to move back to my home town. It has been a very hard time and I often wonder what I was thinking! I had a salary, my own nice office and lived in a very comfortable home. Now I only get paid commissions once a month and live in an apartment. I went from being a manager to being a sales representative and being managed.

Every January there are 3 important Gift Shows from which my customers in Idaho, Nevada and Utah choose to attend. The first and biggest show is in Atlanta, next is Dallas and finally there is a show in Los Angeles. My biggest customers entire year's purchases are largely decided by what they see and buy in January, while attending one of these three shows. When I was hired in April, I was told this was something I really needed to plan to attend. At the time, I was sure I would have the money I needed by then. All the analysis I did told me that this was going to be a very smart move. My wife and I both prayed about it and felt we should do this.

I worked hard all summer and fall, but it was difficult to make the move and everything seemed to be going wrong. I had missed the important start of the year and most of my customers had already purchased what they were going to buy for Christmas. This left me to find new customers, try to get to know my existing customers and that was before the stock market crashed and the economy tanked. We put our house in Boise up for sale and I found an apartment in May, after cashing in the 401K from my former job (where I had worked for over 8 years). I lived in the apartment and my wife stayed in Idaho while our youngest finished High School and got ready for college in the fall.

By Labor Day, we felt like we needed to be together, even though the house was not sold. We started moving and boy was that fun. It was harder and more expensive than I dreamed. Gas was out of sight and I ended up needing to make multiple trips after we rented the biggest rental truck available to get moved. My best friend in Idaho helped me numerous times as I came and went to try to settle things and get the house more attractive to be sold. Meanwhile, my sales at the new job were down and I couldn't meet my quotas, let alone the volume I had expected and planned to reach.

No matter how bad things were with my job, I still knew I had to go to a gift show in January. It was a relief to have my wife and oldest daughter with me in the apartment, but it was hot and no air conditioning in the new place made it challenging to get settled into a new routine. By November it had cooled down outside, but I had no clue how I was going to pay the bills; let alone go on an expensive trip in January. I hoped for some miraculous windfall to save us. I found out I could withdraw my company retirement, so I pinned my hopes on that money, which took a long time to get and cost us a lot in taxes and penalties for the early withdrawal, much as it did when I took out my 401K.

As the year started coming to an end, I discovered my top few customers all seemed to be going to Atlanta, so I looked at airfares for weeks prior to Christmas and tried to find another Account Executive to share expenses for a hotel, once I got there. My company does not pay for the expenses of these trips, so it is entirely up to me to get there and pay for everything. No matter how good of a fare I found on the airfare, I could not find any way to make the trip for any less than $900. It may as well have been $90,000. I didn't have $9.

It seems as if all of my sisters and their families had been struggling with the down economy for months and/or some other issues that were equally overwhelming for them. I was especially upset about the news that one of my nephews (who is actually slightly older than me) had lung cancer. We had been very close when we were younger and he had even introduced me to his wife's cousin, whom I met at their wedding and married 7 months later! I wanted to visit him so badly, but there was no money for the 300 mile drive to where his family lives. I was so sad about this and so sad to be in the same city as most of my sisters lived, but unable to spend time with them, because of all the turmoil.

The family tradition of all of my sisters, me and our families getting together on Christmas eve had ended when my Mom died in 2004. My sisters were just trying to make a Christmas for their own families. My wife's brothers were equally overwhelmed and staying to themselves. None of my sisters that lived out of state could afford to come for a visit. After being gone for 20 years myself, how could I now be within a few minutes drive of my sisters that live here and still not see them or their children on Christmas?

By mid-December, our house in Boise had still not sold and my paychecks had not been enough to pay our bills. I got a termination warning at Thanksgiving, then another one in early December, so my job was in serious jeopardy and I had to work hard right up to Christmas eve. Even when we got the money from cashing in my retirement from my prior job, I couldn't catch up our bills. The church had helped pay our rent once already and had provided some food from their storehouse too, so we we didn't feel we could ask for more help when so many were so much worse off than we were. All of our children were coming home from college to spend the holidays with us and we didn't know how we could even feed them. It seems to me that this is when the blessings started coming, although not as I expected, nor as it happens in fairy tales. Through all of our hard times and trials in the last 9 months; my wife and I have prayed and tried to exercise faith that all would be okay, eventually.

We had drawn family names at Thanksgiving and made a promise to only get something for the person whose name we drew. Our children all work and support themselves through the expenses of college, so it was a sacrifice for them to even come see us to participate in our Christmas worship and simple festivities. They helped us and they helped each other, but we still didn't know what to do. Both my wife and I were almost distraught at how bleak everything seemed. We had been praying and pleading with the Lord to know what to do for such a long time.

On the morning of the 23rd, I felt inspired to ask a new friend for help and he was able to give me enough money for my wife and I to buy a little something for the two children whose names we had drawn, put some gas in our van and enough food to eat until the day after Christmas.

The next blessing came on Christmas eve, while I was out visiting the last of my customers at a local mall. I got a surprise call from one of my nieces, inviting all of us to Christmas dinner with her mom (one of my sisters, of course) and her sister! This warmed my heart like a campfire on a cold night in the mountains thaws out your frozen feet. Knowing that we would see some of my family here (which was one of the big reasons we left Idaho) after all was just what I needed. Instead of needing to use all the food we had, my wife just needed to make a little something to take with us the next day.

Christmas eve was so fun. We talked and played games. We read about the Savior from the scriptures, talked some more and then fell asleep, exhausted. All seven of us were crammed together in our little 3 bedroom apartment with one bath room, but it didn't matter. We were together and we loved each other. For the first time in my life, all I could put in the stockings was a piece of fruit and a small gift I had purchased for my wife months earlier and I didn't even bother to wait until the kids were asleep as I have always done in the past. Oh well, I thought.

To my surprise and everyone's delight when we got up Christmas morning, our youngest son and his sweet wife had purchased some candy and silly little toys which they put in the stockings after everyone else had gone to bed! We took our time opening the presents the children's aunt and Grandma and Grandpa had sent us. Then we opened the small gifts we had purchased for each other. We had a gift or two from friends that we opened as well and it was a lovely morning. We laughed and enjoyed the candy, then took turns getting ready for Christmas dinner.

We couldn't fit in one car, so we took two and headed to my niece's home. On the way, we stopped to pick up my sister and just had so much fun driving in the snow. The rest of the evening was just perfect. We had lots of food and got to enjoy both of my niece's wonderful children and each other. There is nothing like seeing the love, joy and vitality of little children at Christmas. It was hard to leave, but we left happy. It was a beautiful and snowy drive home and another Christmas miracle.

I'll write again tomorrow to detail the Gift Show miracles. They are many and will take awhile to tell.



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