I typically don’t post super personal things on this blog. Yes, I share my heart through devotionals and snippets of our blue life through Instagram photos, but generally I keep our personal details out of the public eye.
But lately, I’ve been feeling it on my heart to share a little bit of our testimony related to my officer’s career.
OMP (AKA Officer McSexy Pants, AKA the ammo + grace hubby) and I are high school sweethearts. We grew up together (we attended the same preschool) and were friends before we starting dating. When we graduated high school, we went off to separate colleges and then ended up at the same one to finish our degrees. We’ve shared five different homes, several room mates, multiple cars, and one big ole cat. We’ve literally grown up together, sharing our successes…and of course, our failures.
OMP’s father is a retired officer, and being a cop was something that was always in the back of his mind. His degree is in law and justice. Ever since I can remember, blue life was part of the plan. After college graduation we moved across the country so that I could attend graduate school and OMP could (we planned) start his career.
But it didn’t come.
We waited, and waited, and prayed. He applied places. He went to interviews. We saw many job openings that seemed perfect. But still, that job didn’t come. That career that he had been preparing for throughout the majority of his life wasn’t there.
During that time my verse of the year was Daniel 3:18 “And if not, He is still good.” Our constant prayer for that season was to stay faithful and hopeful and expectant. Even when job opportunities slipped by. Even when living situations changed. Even when time passed and frustration mounted and hearts broke and tempers flared-my prayer was God, keep us faithful. Lord, help me stay encouraged. Please, God, just remind me of Your faithfulness. I know in my heart that You are so good but right now I need some extra reminding.
Sometimes those prayers were through gritted teeth and an angry heart. Sometimes they were in tears with a helpless heart. And sometimes they were whispered in the quiet of the night, alone in bed, begging God to just help us run the race faithfully. I would pray for patience to speak words of encouragement to my soon to be husband and for help fighting down the angry words I sometimes wanted to say.
And we made the tough decision for OMP to move back to our home state-3,000 miles and a 3 hour time difference from where I was living. And it was hard. And then he got a job-THE job- which was amazing! An answered prayer. And then he started academy, which was hard again. Sometimes we would go days, sometimes almost a week, with just a random text per day as our only means of communication. He was swamped with academy requirements and I was working three jobs and going to grad school full time. Add in the time difference, and some days it was next to impossible to connect.
And then he graduated from academy. And eventually, I graduated with my master’s. And then, I packed up our house alone and made the trek back across the country to where our new home would be. And I got a job. And he got off probation. And we got married. And we bought a house. And we both found ourselves with careers in our chosen fields, in a home we owned, with regular vacations and working cars and beautiful furniture and full benefits.
After nearly a year of filling out applications and praying for OMP’s job and then a year and a few months of living as long distance fiancés, we found ourselves living the life we had been working and praying so hard for. The life we had only dreamt about when we were kids.
Although it’s been awhile, and I’ve spoken and written about this many times, it never ceases to bring me to tears.
God’s goodness. His faithfulness. The way He rewards His children when we look to Him and surrender our plans to His will.
This isn’t to say that we don’t have hardships. We struggle when OMP changes shifts and our routines are turned upside down. We have hard days when either OMP or I have a horrendous day at work and come home feeling defeated. We have trouble adjusting to our town, which isn’t a place I would ever pick to live if given the choice.
But the good outweighs the bad. The blessings far outnumber the hardships. Our love for each other and God’s love for us is far greater than anything the devil tries to throw at us.
And I encourage each of you who are facing your own struggles-whatever they may be-to lean in when you want to give up. Lean in to each other and lean into the Lord, because I promise, you will never regret it.
“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”
[2 Timothy 4:7]
God is good!
The job application part was kinda the worst. My officer was an EMT when we got married (so it’s always been crazy hours), but applying for police departments. He was also going through the application process for customs and border patrol. The border patrol application took 3 years to get through, and then he got a job offer the same week a local police department sent him one! Only AFTER he turned down the border patrol did the local agency tell him he wasn’t being hired as an officer, but as an aide. 😮 (They didn’t say why but we knew it was because he has type 1 diabetes.) The sergeant he had as an aide was SOoo good though and kept encouraging him to keep applying other places and got him into lots of trainings and finally another agency actually hired him as an officer. All that, not to mention academy, was so full of uncertainty, it’s hard to believe we got through it.
But God is good! And even if it hadn’t worked out and he’d ended up working at Starbucks, God is good!
Thank you for sharing this, Victoria! The application part is SO hard and something so unlike other jobs, where you just submit a brief resume and maybe have an interview. There’s so many steps! God is definitely good. 💙