A New Chapter

Today is the first day of the new chapter of my life. Today is the first day I became a homemaker. Ewwww, that sounds too "wear-a-dress-and-primp-my-hair-while-vacuuming-and-shaking-dust-from-the-doilies" weird. Let's just say I no longer work outside the home.

Yesterday was quite the day. I was going to update my blog last night but my head hadn't wrapped around the whole day yet. I needed the night to digest everything. I don't know what I was expecting, but I went to work cheery and upbeat and came home really really really sad. People keep telling me "this day closes a chapter in your life" but it feels more like a book. I worked for Beneficial for 13 years.

My boss that I said "good-bye" to yesterday, is the same boss that hired me. Do you know what I was hired to do? For 8 hours a day, I typed up application jackets for new life insurance applications and hand stapled together life insurance policies. That's it, for reals. My team definitely had time to spare, back in those days Beneficial wasn't exactly efficient. We constantly played jokes on each other, we had "laffy taffy" hour every day, where we would read the jokes from the candy wrapper and whoever guessed the answer right, got a prize from the All a Dollar store. We only had 2 phones per team (there were 4-5 people on a team)!

After I had been there about 3 or 4 months, my boss said "everybody stand up, and rotate one desk to your right. Now sit down and do that job.". I thought she was crazy! Now I had to learn how to be a medical clerk. I ordered medical records from doctor's offices, I ordered driving records, I had to match blood and urine labs with files....it was a complete 180! But I soon learned that job so now I understood 2 jobs on the team.

About 3 or 4 months later, my boss came back to our team and said "everybody stand up, rotate one desk to the right. Now sit down and do that job". GRRRR, now I had to data entry applications, talk to agents, process premium payments, pay agents their commissions, and issue policies! I never thought my brain could comprehend all this info. Time went on, we had less play time at work.

After about a year of this rotation, my boss said "okay, now you know everything about this job so starting tomorrow we will assign you an agency and you will do all the work for a specific agency." We all thought she had LOST IT! I grew up a little bit that day because I became the connection between the Home Office and an agency. I think this is when I really grew into my job and knew that I was here for the long haul.

Six months after this major transition my boss took me to lunch and asked me to become a Team Lead. I had only worked for Beneficial for 1 1/2 years. I knew I couldn't be a Team Lead...just like I knew I couldn't rotate desks and do all the jobs listed above. In otherwise, I took the new position with much fear!

Soon I became in charge of 5 people, their agencies, and I had to quality check all the policies my team created. It didn't take me long to learn that Leadership ran in my blood. I LOVED it! Don't think I'm mean, but right away I had several people quit on me. Beneficial was still in the mind-set of "nobody gets fired, you can do whatever you want here" and I was pretty sick of it. I expected people to show up to work on time and put in an honest day's work. To some, that was too much to ask and they walked out. It ended up being awesome because then we hired top notch employees and things started working very efficiently at Beneficial.

Soon after that a co-worker of mine introduced me to Sam. Soon after that I was married.....and fast forward 9 years.....

Carson was just about to start Preschool, Parker was 15 months old. I was still a Team Lead. I loved my job, I loved working with all the insurance agents, I knew the business inside and out. However, things were getting pretty stressful in the "Mom" department. I was a mom who didn't have child care for my 2 boys while I worked full time. I was calling people in my neighborhood constantly, asking if they could watch my boys. It was a nightmare.

I approached my boss 4 years ago and asked her if I could take a step down from being a Team Lead and work from home, part time. This was a HUGE moment for all of us: nobody had been allowed to work from home before, I was scared to death to walk away from the awesome job I had and be at home...trying to balance kids and work.

It wasn't easy, but eventually everybody decided to have faith in me and let me try it. Four years and another baby later, it worked out great! Well, until yesterday....

August 31, 2009. Again, I was upbeat as I went into work. The first thing I saw was a card on my keyboard. It was a good-bye card from a co-worker. It started to hit home on what was happening. As I started making preparations to leave, I started seeing the puffy eyes and tears from long-time friends of mine. Crap, this isn't easy at all!! I've known Beneficial longer than I've known my husband and three children. These people knew me when I was 21 and REEEAAALLLLYYYY immature...and they still are willing to consider me their friend. That's amazing! :)

As I was sitting down to lunch, my boss said "Carrie, Kent Cannon wants to see you in his office". Oh. Okay. Um. Yeah. Kent is the CEO of the company.

I walked down to Kent's office, having no idea why he wanted to see me. He sat me down and proceeded to apologize for things ending the way they did. He thanked me for my years of service and told me I was "one of the greats". It was incredibly nice! I thanked him for having faith in me to let me work from home 4 years ago. He said "I have complete trust in you, that is why it worked, you are top notch." Wow, that did my heart some good! I needed that ego boost on this crazy day. After about 15 minutes I went back to my cold lunch, but feeling much better.

Finally around 2pm I packed up my desk, hugged everybody, and said "see ya on Facebook!" and went home. The whole way home I fought the tears. It's weird to be my age and realize I need to find myself in my new role as a homemaker (again, ewww). I know it's what I need to do. I know it's so important. I'm very excited for the opportunity, but it's so foreign to me!

So, as I begin a new chapter in my life, I'm excited to see what the Lord has in store for me. Whatever it is, I know I'll feel unqualified, but I know I just have to accept that and do my best, just like my forever changing job I had with Beneficial.

I've traded in the glory and ego boosts....for this:


It was the pefect end to a really bizarre day. Life is good!