I have learned in my 40 something years of living there are times in life that are considered “Life Changing Moments”. Moments when you stop and look at what you are doing with your life and say to yourself, “is this all worth it” or “am I in the right place for my family and I”?

Some of those moments are:

• getting your first real job after high school/college
• getting married
• having kids
• moving to a place you have always wanted to live

All of these and a longer list of them are considered Life Changing in some way or another. But do we do it for the right reasons? Are we looking for direction from God or your higher power, whatever that might be, to make sure we are making the right decisions.

Over a year ago, I was starting to become unhappy at my job in Dallas. I had even let my boss know that if a certain person continued the track they were on that I couldn’t work with them due to differing alignments with work/life balance the person and I had. My life has never revolved around my work. My family has always come first, even if that meant splitting up for a time to give my family a better opportunity somewhere else.

So I struct out on a search for something new. I wanted to go back into the field that I had been in earlier in my career, hospital cost reporting (don’t ask, it takes a special type of person to do them. Your tax return on steroids…). One of the positions that was offered was in New Orleans, I can vividly remember the conversation that my husband and I had about that offer. He was strongly against a move to New Orleans. I had a couple of other offers that didn’t end up panning out, so just for kicks, I went on the interview to New Orleans.

Over a year and a half later, here I am in the city of New Orleans working next to the Superdome. I can’t say that my husband and I prayed about it and let God lead us here. This was before losing Big Bubby, when I thought that I was in complete control of my family and their lives. Don’t get me wrong, I believe God did lead us here knowingly or not for a purpose, which was to get us out of our house of 17 years before our loss could come.

I would have never made it going daily back to the same house Big Bubby grew up in and having to relive memory after memory of him in it. When we lost Big Bubby, I told my husband that there was a reason we were lead to New Orleans. Our kids had not been since they were very little, it gave them the opportunity to come down and experience it at an older age. Big Bubby experienced Bourbon Street a little too much along with the Red Headed Step Child. So our family was able to spend some time together experiencing southern Louisiana before we lost Big Bubby. Those are memories that we won’t forget. They will bring up laughter through tears when we walk down Bourbon Street together reliving his and Red Headed Step Child’s crazy nights.

I know some parents who have lost children are still living in their homes. I give you great kudos for being able to do that. We know the people in our house and have been in it since the accident to see what they have remodeled. I am glad they are remodeling as it wasn’t the same, but in some ways it was if that makes any since at all. It was sad walking through for me because I could see Big Bubby in certain parts and it brought painful yet happy memories back.

So when a life changing moment happens for you, remember, there probably is a reason for it. You may not understand it at the time because the purpose hasn’t been revealed to you at that moment, in time, you will find out what the purpose is. Hopefully you will be as happy and content with your moment as I am with ours.