Houston?

It's possible that some anonymous readers of this blog could be wondering how in the world we ended up in Texas.  It's more likely that I don't have any anonymous readers, but I feel that for myself and for the future book form that this blog will eventually be converted to, I should revisit how we got from Alabama to Texas... Sit back, it's sort of a long story.

Towards the end of Matthew's last year of grad school, we started contemplating what our next move would be.  In theory, we wanted to end up back towards "home"- being the Nashville/TN/KY area....  Sidebar: God sure does have a sense of humor.  Through a contact at Vanderbilt, Matthew became very interested in this program/fellowship called Molecular Genetics.  After some research, M decided to apply to various programs that offered this fellowship, but we had no idea what to expect, because this field is a COMPLETE departure from what he has been doing for the last 4-5 years.  Through all the applications, he found out that Vanderbilt, Spokane, WA, Baylor (in Houston), and Harvard wanted to interview him for the position. 

His Harvard interview was first.  I blogged about this trip a long time ago.... We absolutely LOVED Boston.  I remember walking through the streets of Brookline Village and saying, "If they offer you a spot, we are definitely coming here".... Oh the irony. :)  He loved the program....and again, Boston was amazing. 

His second interview was at Vandy.  He liked it, but didn't love it like he had loved Harvard.  So we began conversations of, "If they both say yes, how would we turn down moving close to family/friends to move far away", to the next day, "How could we turn Harvard down to move to Nashville?". 

A week or two after his Vanderbilt interview, he got a call from the head of the program there.  She was personally calling him to inform him that they had decided to go with someone else for the spot.  Up until that point we didn't know if they were only going to be taking one person, but that ended up being the case.  She wanted to let him know because she thought he had been an excellent candidate, and she felt he deserved to hear it from her and not from an impersonal letter in the mail.  To say we were bummed would be an understatement.  We felt like if Vanderbilt was saying no, surely Harvard would say no.... not to mention we were heartbroken over the realization that moving "home" was not in the cards.. for now. 

A couple of days after the bad news, I am being shaken awake by M.  Harvard had called and left a voice-mail... they said yes.   How you can go from extreme sadness to utter excitement in such little a time is pretty amazing.  We were ecstatic.  We spent the next few days looking at apartments on-line, job openings for me.  As far as we were concerned, we were moving to Boston. 

His last interview was at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.  He almost cancelled the interview, because at the time, we didn't want to move to Texas, and Harvard had said yes.  But, Baylor had already paid for the flight, so we decided he might as well go.  Once there, Matthew loved it.  The program was fantastic, he loved the facility where the department was located, he was awe-struck by the amount of funding/money available...and on top of that, they would allow him to do a dual fellowship in Biochemical Genetics after he completed the Molecular portion.  He came home speaking of how impressed he was by everything he saw.... One problem, Harvard wanted an answer, and Baylor was a week or two away from making any final decisions.

Through Divine Providence, the lady at Harvard agreed to give M more time to make his decision.  So we waited... and waited to hear from Baylor.  Matthew even called the head of the program at Baylor to explain that Harvard was waiting to hear from us.  Even at this point, if Baylor said yes, we still didn't know which to choose, we just wanted to know all of our options.  A few days later, Baylor calls, and it's a yes.  Now the decision-making really began.

How do you choose between 2 really great programs?  Through talks with the head of this particular program at UAB, Baylor's program was better, they were offering a dual certification, but how do you say no to Harvard?  It was also essentially choosing between 2 different lifestyles: apartment-living vs. house-buying, public transportation vs. 2 car driving, small to non-existent churches to big church family, Democrats vs. Republicans (ok, not really, but seriously how different could Massachusetts and Texas be?!)

We were torn.  We had our families/friends praying fervently that God would lead us to the right decision.  But we almost felt like we couldn't make a bad choice.  We were still undecided the day before we were to make our final call.  The night before, I told Matthew that I was ok with either choice, and that I felt that as the leader of our family he needed to make the decision.  I would be supportive either way....after all, it was his career in the first place :) Matthew spent most of the night downstairs in the den praying, and the next morning he earnestly explained that he felt God was leading us to Houston, he knew that at the beginning it was not our first choice, but that he was positively sure that this was the right decision.....  So here we are..  Loving it so far!

I'm sorry Boston.  Maybe we will buy a second home off the Cape sometime down the road :) ha.