5 Years Ago Today

Five years ago today started many new challenges in the Hendricks family. Jonathan was working at American Airlines as an aircraft cleaner. Not the job of his dreams but a good job with awesome benefits. We had built our home in Bristow about a year and a half before that and were pretty settled. Jonathan was on the tarmac right by the runway at Tulsa International polishing the top of the wing on a 737. He looked up and saw plane after plane landing on the runway. Usually, a plane would land every 20 - 25 seconds, in this instance a plane was landing every 3 seconds. He went back to his shop to see what was going on.

I was at home getting Jacksen ready for the day. He was a little over a year and a half old and I was five months pregnant with Jennah. The first few days after the attacks American Airlines started talking about layoffs. Everyday for the next month and a half we expected Jonathan to get laid off. Finally the end of November he got his notice. We didn't know what to do. That same week we hit a deer with our car and it tore it up so much the car wouldn't run. What a week! The good news was we had deer in everything for the next couple of weeks, deer tacos, deer spaghetti, deer chili, you get the idea.

We decided to take a huge risk and sell our house and move to Edmond for Jonathan to finish his degree. I was really scared because the plan was for me to work as a server at a restaurant in the evenings and Jonathan would watch the kids. Remember at this time I am nine months prego with Jennah! I was scared to death of everything. So we moved from a 1600 sq. ft. house on 5 acres to a 700 sq. Ft. college apartments with college kids all around us. (To top it all off I went into labor with Jennah the night we moved in to the apartment).

The first thing we did was find a church. Our saving grace was the Edmond Church of Christ. The young families class there took us under their wings and treated us like we had been there for years. After Jonathan finished his schooling we moved on to do youth ministry in Muskogee. That didn't work out but we still live in Ft. Gibson and love our church home here. Looking back on all that we went through we know it was Gods plan for us. We learned so much about each other and about God and how he works through us. We also learned so much from the Edmond C of C. Many things we have been able to start here at Ft. Gibson we patterned from the Young Families Class at Edmond. Even though we didn't know anyone who died in the terrible attacks on our Nation and I didn't have to let my husband go overseas to fight in the war, we were affected by it and it did forever change our lives.