FULL-TIME MOM
Last week brought a lot of changes to the Shepherd family! For the last two weeks, I have been training my replacement at Commonwealth Brands. Justin and I had made the decision for me to stay home with Lewis a couple months ago, but we were not sure how it would work out financially since Justin's income through our coffee shop has been inconsistent at best since we took it on last year. Still we believed this was the move God wanted us to make so we pushed forward with faith that Justin would find a full time job with benefits.

On Thursday, the pieces came together and Justin was offered a position on the copy desk at the Daily News doing essentially the same job that he had done there before. We are thrilled and in awe of God's faithfulness to us. My prayer throughout the last several weeks has been that God would receive glory by providing for us; that we would recognize that he kept his promise to us, but not only us--we wanted to be able to share this with everyone around us too. It is hard to act on our convictions sometimes, especially when we cannot see how everything is going to work out. This experience has proven to us what we knew already--that God is much better at handling our lives than we are ourselves. Nothing is impossible for him.

We will still have to cut corners and do without a lot of extras to make this work, but we know that this is a decision we will never regret.

Justin's new employment made it easier for me to say goodbye to Commonwealth Brands on Friday. I will certainly miss seeing everyone on a daily basis, especially Martha and Joe (my direct and indirect supervisors respectively!) who made working rather enjoyable and fun (see top photo) but I know that we will still see each other (as Bowling Green is not very big and i live only 1 mile from the office!). Lewis enjoyed stopping by on Friday. He smiled and laughed at several people including Buffy (see bottom photo). He was well rested after sleeping 9 hours straight the night before!! He has slept through the night (8 hrs or more) for three nights straight. We are happy with all the changes and look forward to watching Lewis develop even more in the coming months!

--Shelley