9 ~ Bouncing Babies, Bust Oil Fields, and Broken Ankles

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The oilfield crashed hard before the girls’ first birthdays, and I learned the hard way that there really is no such thing as a layoff-proof job. We were sitting in the Sunday morning service at Calvary Bible Church, and Pastor Jess was talking about a missions trip; the church was talking to a small church in Utah that needed a roof. Rich Grubbs, a successful oilfield guy who had helped when the girls were newborns and provided diapers, turned in his pew during the announcement and said, “Hey, you don’t have anything going on. Go help them, and I’ll pay for your gas and food.” “Dude, for real? I just lost my job, and this is your response?” I was thinking about how I should respond to the abrupt man in front of me, but … he had a point. I didn’t have anything going on, and they did need help.

Off to Utah, we headed, and I sat in the back seat of a Dodge Durango scrolling for jobs on my phone while some old guys chatted upfront. One old fella, in particular, was quite enjoyable during my job search. “What’er you doing back there, son? You’re awful quiet.” “Looking for jobs and submitting my resume,” I replied. He had to stop. He turned almost completely in his seat. He stared at me for 3 or 4 full seconds and said, “From yer phone?” “Yessir.” “Man, oh man, what they won’t do next.” He said as he slowly turned back, facing forward. The next day we were up on the roof tearing off shingles, and I got a call from Brandon Nicklause, of IRG, Colorado. I dismissed myself from the roof to call him back, secured an interview for the next week in Denver with him and Eddie, and I climbed back up on the roof. The old fella who obviously disagreed with my phone conversation during the workday commented, “Must be pretty important to put your tools down and walk away.” Well, I got an interview scheduled for next week.” I said with a smile that Davy Crockett would have been proud of. “How’d you get an interview?” “From those apps, I was filling out on the way down here and resumes I submitted.” Now it was his turn to put his tools down. He stared at me again, and it was obvious that we were in part two of smartphone disbelief. “You mean to tell me that you got an interview… in Denver … for next week … from yer phone?” “Yessir.” He never replied. He just shook his head and started working again, though I did hear him repeat the story in amazement to two more guys, including the pastor that we were there helping.

The interview did work out, and I had a job just like that. I was the newest member of IRG Colorado, a homegrown, grassroots business that would eventually hold about 70% of the flooring company market share in the state. Eddie, Steve, and Brandon all welcomed me with open arms, and I was eager to learn the ropes. Only one little detail remained, we needed to sell and buy a house. We had written off making any money in Grand Junction. The oilfield tanked and took half of the town with it when it did. There we no jobs, and the market was flooded with homes from people getting out of Dodge. The market was hopeless, but we were jobless, had two kids to feed, we had to leave town, and we needed to do so now. Julia and her parents had painted the interior of the home during one of my 10-day shifts. We had a new carpet installed when Home Depot was running a “free install if you buy more than two rooms” deal. Julia decorated and therefore “staged” the home in a style that just seemed to appeal to everyone, and I worked on the grass to get it from the field of weeds that we moved into to the greenest lawn on the block. The house looked great for sure, and we contributed to our street, but the market was down, and we were going to be thrilled to break even. Cindy Day--please look her up if you need a home in Grand Junction--listed our home for us, and not only did it sell, but it sold for over asking just after we left town. How kind had God been to us in these things? Let me recount a few standout moments for you:

• He brought us back west from Indiana and paid for the move.

• He provided the income to help fund the adoption.

• He cared for me to and from Florida in very significant ways.

• He allowed me to be laid off in 11 months and two weeks, just shy of the cutoff, so that Halliburton not only paid to move us from Indiana to Junction but also funded our move from Junction to the front range.

• He sold our house for over asking in a down market

• He provided a job “on my phone” while I was out of town helping a church.

Philippians 4:19-20

19 And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. 20 To our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen.

You might not be aware, but did you know that real estate on the front range is ridiculously expensive? Well, it is. My job was amazing. They provided me with a work truck and a fuel card and said that I could commute from Woodland Park, where my parents lived, to Aurora, where IRG was, and that I didn’t have to pay the difference in fuel. This was a huge blessing. It allowed us to stay with my parents while we looked for something that was “affordable.” So here I was commuting from Woodland to Aurora every day while living in my parents’ basement and listening to Rush on AM radio rag on kids who live in their parents' basement. Not a great combination, let me tell you. We relived the same house-hunting story as Grand Junction, just about $40,000 higher this time. We were getting outbid on everything we looked at, and not by a little. We were getting crushed!

My parents are incredible. They knew we weren’t scamming the system, and they loved having the girls there. Each of the girls took their first steps at Mom and Dad’s house, and that is something that Mom and Dad will always have. It was really a blessing to be there, but we needed to leave and cleave—big time. A house finally popped up in Fort Lupton, Colorado, that had sat empty for two years. Water couldn’t be turned on to verify anything by way of inspections, same with gas and electricity. Our guts felt good, and Holly Duckworth (highly recommend), who had worked incredibly hard for us, put in a full asking price offer for us sight unseen! If you’re from California, skip this part, but for the rest of the world, let me let you in. In 2017 the best deal we could find on a 1913 two bed, one bath, winterized, vacant house with zero updates to mechanicals, doors or windows was $175,000. That’s insane, folks. We felt like we found the last house still standing that was less than $200,000 in the entire state.

The loan type that we secured required that we prove the house had running water and working heat within 72 hours of closing. Well, this seemed like a fun challenge. My father-in-law headed up from New Mexico, and no sooner had we closed at the title company than we started ripping out every piece of plumbing in the entire house. It was a mess! Half galvanized, half copper, there had been about 1,000 leaks, and they had all been patched together with SharkBite fittings, prayer, and possibly voodoo. If we had turned the water on, I don’t think any of those old repairs would have held. I picked up two rolls of pex, and started running a red and blue plastic pipe back to every fixture in the house. Next we moved on the heater, which was a nightmare. It needed new gas lines and who knows what else. Now, you can’t pull a permit on a house you don’t own, nor can you pull one within 72 hours of purchasing. So here we are ripping the guts out of this house with zero permits in hand just to get it so that we don’t lose the whole deal when the bank person comes by. We worked frantically until she showed up. She asked to see the water run, and it did… and then she asked for heat. We didn’t tell her we had heat. We simply turned the thermostat up and kept our mouths shut. I believe her exact words were, “Well, you have air. I don’t need to wait for it to warm up. Have a nice day!” She walked out. We had done it! We didn’t have heat, but we had a house!

“We had a house.” Let me drill down on that for you. We had a house, the kids just couldn’t move in, or Julia, or really me, but … I had to work on it. I grabbed a childhood tent out of Mom and Dad’s garage and set it up in the house as a way to keep dust off of my clothes and sleep at night without breathing direct asbestos. I took the next few months to move a few walls, pull out the old clawfoot tub, frame an actual shower, fix subfloors, and make the home livable. I would work all day in Aurora and the surrounding areas at my job, come back to Fort Lupton, eat some Burger King, change, and tear into our house. I kept this schedule in the loop for weeks and weeks. Julia would come up on Saturdays, and I would head back with her to go to church with the family on Sunday morning. After a day together, I would hit the road and drive three hours north back to the house to prepare for work on Monday morning.

We missed each other, and we needed to be together. One Saturday, Julia pulled up as I was working on the kitchen. She said, “This is it, Babe, the kids and I are moving in tomorrow.” Questions and shock flooded my face. “Babe, you can’t, look at this place!” it was a mess, but she didn’t care, she was done living in two separate homes, and she was coming “home” regardless of the condition of the house. We worked our tails off that Saturday with renewed energy. We kid-proofed the danger zones, readied their bedroom as much as we could, cleaned everything, and we moved back in together. Our house was a wreck, and we didn’t care. This was the life we had chosen, and we were going to live it together.

Julia had made arrangements to stay with me through Sunday, and when mom drove the girls up on Sunday afternoon to help move them in, she just stood there and cried. Oblivious to our mess, we just assumed that she would miss us. We hugged and kissed and said goodbye. Only later did we discover that my mom, who is very content with very little and not a high maintenance woman at all, was actually crying in terror of leaving her granddaughters in a war zone of a house. Sorry, Mom.

Julia soon became pregnant again with our third, and we worked on that little house every day, continuing to do everything ourselves as time and money permitted. The broken-down old porch turned into a picturesque Mayberry place to sit and watch the rain come down. The old dusty kitchen took shape into a lovely Joanna Gainesesque space complete with custom built-in cabinets and tile splash, complete with farmhouse sink and even a shiplap accent wall. The girls’ room was the cutest thing you have ever seen, the master bedroom doubled in size, and we even added two bedrooms in the basement. The lawn perked up with a little TLC, and after collecting antique bricks from three donor locations, I was able to add a period red brick sidewalk that popped against the healthy green lawn, making our little house the stand out property on the street, or at least most improved.

We brought Joey, our third, home in that little house, and our lives were just starting to level out. We found a great church, Faith Point, up in Longmont. Julia had conceived again; we loved our little neighborhood. Fancy people at church and work still turned their noses up when they heard “Fort Lupton,” just like they did to Orchard Mesa, but we didn’t care. We were happy, and the Lord was blessing our lives, our kids, and my work.

My sister-in-law, Amber Andrews, was visiting us from her home in Michigan, where she owns a photography business. We flew her in to shoot newborn photos of Joey, and she and Julia were running around taking photos and having a good time. We had a baby gate up between the family room and kitchen due to house layout and repairs still ongoing, and Julia took a step over that gate that would change our lives yet again. I was in Parker, Colorado, when my phone rang. Julia was hysterical and obviously in pain. She had tripped over the gate on her way over and had broken her leg badly. I was one exit away from E-470, which would take me right to the Brighton ER, but I was southbound and headed in the wrong direction. I floored the truck I was in, hit the exit, flipped a U-turn back on to I-25 to catch E-470 Northbound, and ran hard for 36 miles to Brighton. I had about 2x the distance as the ambulance, and I beat them there.

Poor Julia arrived in the back of the ambulance in an incredible amount of pain. After she was rushed in on a gurney, I watched in agony as her mangled ankle bone was forcibly held in multiple positions over an x-ray board for multiple x-rays to see the full extent of breakage and fracturing as well as a dislocation that I only learned of when she arrived. A med student stood at the foot of the bed they laid Julia in. In her hot pink scrubs, the med student seemed like she might be trying to psych herself up. She kept cracking her neck, ponytail whipping side to side and flicking her hands toward the ground like an athlete getting ready to compete for gold. I walked up to her and asked, “first time?” “Yeah,” she said, grinning with nervous excitement. “You’ll do great. Just own it and set it with confidence.” I said, trying to reassure her and not freak out that on the other side of a compound fracture and dislocated ankle, the lady caring for my bride was a nervous kid in pink scrubs who had never done this before.   

We finished that remodel while juggling a crazy schedule at work as I grew through the company, three kids under three years of age, a broken ankle, and for quite some time, a knee scooter. Once the house was nearly finished, we made the mistake of looking at property values in the neighborhood. No, surely the appreciation hadn’t gone up that much, … had it? We decided to check with a local realtor. It had. What on earth was happening to real estate prices. We loved that house and created so many memories there, but we knew it was time to pack up, realize our equity, and find another project to work on. SEO Type jargon. Move along ... Hello, and welcome to my not a blog blog! So, I wrote a book, and I want the message of that book to get out regardless of whether or not anyone buys a copy of the book. A blog, so I hear, is a great way to take advantage of SEO and make sure that people who WANT to find content that my book covers will have a clear path to it’s happy little home in the Amazon marketplace and should then be able to walk away with a hard copy, kindle version, or Audible copy of said book. To that end, I will be releasing sneak previews and portions to each chapter over the next several weeks. Can I buy the book today? No, sorry. While it is completed, edited, and proofed, the audio version is currently being recorded by a guy with a much better voice than my own. I have no idea what I am doing in publishing, but I think I want to release it all at once. How did you get your book on Amazon? Well, I am a brilliant author, but I also used Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) that allows me to manage and upload my own manuscript(s), audio, and artwork. So what is the book about? Sovereign and Gentle is a window into my happy little family for those of you who don’t know us as well as a deeper look for those who do. The book will even be informative to some of my closest friends, as I don’t talk about much of this content often. The book opens with the prospect of either Julia or myself donating a Kidney, follows that painful journey, and then backtracks to cover some of our struggles with infertility, multiple miscarriages, foster care, and adoption. I even sprinkled in some real estate investing horror stories for you guys. The story is framed by key passages from Scripture that have been especially meaningful to me, and the climax of the book seeks to honor and praise God, who has gifted us in all things to be able to serve him in and through our struggles. Did I discuss the big church from college days that laid me off on multiple occasions and kicked us out of a house after the pastor went up the river? I did, and I don’t think I’m bitter… I think... I’m a work in progress there, but I hope that I framed that experience in such a manner that others who have been beaten up by institutions can find comfort in the one who is sovereign over all things and in His ultimate plan.