Life These Days?
Elizabeth Moore
These past few months, I’ve had lots of questions about where I am and what I’m doing these days. That’s a great question—one that I love answering! Your concerned, quizzical looks are valid. I’m not exactly doing “life” or “job” or “young-adult-living-situation” in a conventional way, but I’m exactly where I need to be, and I couldn’t be more grateful.
This summer, after an abrupt but gracious life change, I was without a job. Surprisingly, unemployment didn’t scare me. It excited me and forced me to put my hope and future completely in the hands of the Lord.
For about a month and a half, I waited out the unemployment transition in my sweet, safe Louisiana hometown. I lived under my parents’ roof and existed one day at a time. I don’t have a story to tell from those weeks, except that it felt like a long, slow endurance.
As I waited and prayed, Tyler, Texas kept coming to mind. It seemed like an ideal next step. Tyler, TX is home to my second home, Pine Cove, and full of people who know me and my family. It seemed like a place where I could grow into who I am becoming without the emotional strain of moving somewhere brand new.
I applied for a handful of jobs in the area, had a few phone interviews and kept up hope, but none of the jobs seemed like a great fit. During this waiting period, I prayed for the Lord to provide a family for me to live with. I’ve done the live-in-a-house-with-six-girls thing and loved it, but in this season I craved the stability and authority of a family. I also prayed for the Lord to send a wiser woman who I could watch and imitate and ask hard questions.
Sometime around mid-August, Carrie Langemeier called my mom. This phone call was nothing less than the miraculous sovereignty of God. Carrie was driving from Columbus, TX to Fayetteville, AR when she felt the Holy Spirit prompting her to call my mom. She didn’t because she thought it would be too intrusive, but 30 minutes later, my mom texted Carrie, asking her to pray and letting her know that I was looking for a job in Tyler. Carrie immediately picked up the phone and called mom back saying, “Melinda! The Lord just told me to call you!” When Carrie learned that I wanted to move to Texas and had a degree in English Writing, her creative wheels started turning. Unbeknownst to me, for several years the Lord had been prompting Carrie to write a book, but she knew she needed some help and accountability to make that happen. All of the pieces began to fit together: I needed a job, she needed an assistant, I had a degree in English, she needed help with a writing project, I wanted to move in with a family, they have an empty garage apartment. It was perfectly orchestrated by the Lord.
A little over a month later, I moved in with the Langemeier’s and started my job as Carrie’s personal assistant.
Carrie is an amazing woman with a lot of careers. She is a wife, mom, interior designer, writer, speaker, and disciple-maker. Every day looks different for us, but our common rhythm is work hard, communicate, make lists, be flexible, and connect deeply.
She is the visionary—the creative mind with twenty brilliant book or business ideas every day. I’m a detail girl—the one that tends to gravitate toward structure and punctuality and apologetically asking Carrie to write twenty drafts until it’s just right. We are a good team.
On any given day, you might find us frying eggs for breakfast, researching or ordering for a design project, makings lists on any scrap of paper we can find, running around to meetings and errands and school pick-ups, drafting a book proposal, preparing for a speaking engagement, playing board games with Beck and Noah, trying to remember laundry and dinner, and always being flexible.
Some days we don’t see each other at all, and some days we spend hours together at home or at the Co.Working space in Tyler. Our pace is fast and slow, depending on the day. We’ve seen the glamorous and the ugly in each other, and it’s built so much raw and sturdy trust.
This is a good rhythm for us, or at least for me. I’ve needed this freedom to not be the strong one. It’s painful but beautiful to see how much grace Carrie gives me everyday—yet she does it so joyfully.
She is a mentor and a disciple and a mom and a friend and a broken human herself. I am so blessed, beyond what I deserve or even expected, to have a wise friend to process life with.
I’m learning so much truth about who I am, and so glad I get to do it in a beautiful house with a beautiful family in Texas. I’m not sure how long I’ll be here, but I am so content for now and constantly handing my future to the Lord, asking for His guidance.