Still Reeling...

Ok so I think it has been on the news at this point but I can't move on with my blog without writing this post...

Most of you have heard Ben was let go from his job on Thursday morning, yes my birthday. Here is the story:

Wednesday night (or rather early thursday morning) at 3:40AM Ben was called by the alarm monitoring company that monitors the store he was managing. This is not AT ALL uncommon. In the time he was a shop manager there, he was probably called in the middle of the night at least 15 times. They have an amazing amount of motion detectors and everything from balloons, leaves, cats, whatever is known for setting them off. The policy is to wait for the 2nd alarm before dispatching the police. So Ben was called at 3:40AM and told one of his sensors by the rear door had gone off. He asked if it was the first alarm, told them to monitor it and call him back immediately if a 2nd alarm went off. 

So thursday morning ben goes to work like normal and finds out his shop was broken into and in a MAJOR way. These were very skilled professional burglars who obviously knew about cash america's floor plan as well as their policy. I won't go into that many details because I know it's not that interesting but they cut the power and every wire going to the security so there would be no second call. They stole everything out of the safes, most of the store's inventory and left the store just in shambles. Ben called me that morning to tell me he may not be home early for my birthday like he had planned but at that point he had no idea he would take the fall for this. So long story short, around noon he found out that apparently he should have handled THIS situation differently than the rest because the rear door is a critical area and the police should have been dispatched, now due to insurance reasons and them being able to claim all the damages from the robbery...ben had to be terminated. 

Obviously ben ended up coming home early for my birthday after all but we didn't do much celebrating. We are still reeling from the shock of this and of course we are heart broken. We spent most of our first few days just trying to get our brains to stop spinning out of control. This was NEVER something we envisioned as even a possibility. Ben was doing so wonderful at his job, he moved up incredibly quickly, was always getting such positive reinforcement about his job performance that it's just been shocking...no other words. We realize this has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with ben's job performance and in fact his supervisors have said that he was a great manager, a great employee and they will give him glowing recommendations but the termination had to happen because of policy. 

So where does this leave us....we are sad, we are confused, we are a little bit lost, but we are hopeful. The timing of this is just so very bizarre. We got notice from our mortgage lender that our loan had gone through and our papers are waiting for signing at the title company on tuesday, basically we got notice that we can't back out of our house on tuesday, ben lost his job on thursday. Crazy! So I am leaning heavily on prayer right now. I am SPECIFICALLY asking God to show me His plan because I know he has one, I am asking for peace and faith in my own thoughts, I am asking for His help financially (obviously), and I am asking for this path that we are being put on to lead to a better future for our family. Other than that I am trying desperately to remain calm...to trust, to have faith, to have patience. 

In the meantime if you know of a job for either ben or myself let us know. Other than that we would love it if you would add us to your prayers.

By the way please don't feel like you have to come up with something profound to say in order to comment. I called my dad right after it happened and told him the story, he didn't say much and then we hung up. He called back 5 minutes later and told me "he had had a moment to gather his thoughts now and...this really sucks". So this really sucks just about covers it!