a long time coming

A few weeks ago, Ronnie's boss announced her retirement at the end of this year.  While this came as a shock to the upper management in their company, Ronnie and I have known that it was coming, though we had no idea when she would actually make the announcement.  Keep in mind, Ronnie works in a two person department, just him and his boss and you can imagine that his desire (and hers, just for the record) was to step into her position as manager.  He has worked under her for all of the nearly 12 years that he has been with the company and we joke that they are like an old married couple ... finishing each other's sentences or working in silence while each knows exactly what the other one needs to complete their task.

Thus began the tedious waiting game.  Ronnie had his first interview for the job the day we left to go to his mom's for the big birthday celebration.  I had visions (better known as wishful thinking) of them telling him that the interview process was just a formality and of course the job would be his ... after all, he is the only other person in the company that actually knows what all they do.  But, of course, we had to sweat it out through the decision to move the department under a different VP, which led to another round of interviews.  Interestingly, they kept telling Ronnie that his only drawback is his lack of management experience, which begs the question of how you can get management experience until someone takes that chance on your ability to learn.

Just so you know, the last couple of weeks have been tense ones around here.  It is the not knowing that gets to me.  Knowing that she is retiring, but not knowing if her bosses would allow him the opportunity to be the boss.  Not to mention knowing how incredibly hard it would be for him to help train someone to be his boss and not knowing if he would even want to stay with the company if that happened.  Trying to trust God and be patient.

I am sure that there are lots of life lessons that I could share here, but I am going to skip that today and just tell you how proud I am to announce that my husband is (or will be soon) the new manager of his department.  He has worked so hard for this company, with very little reward (other than a regular paycheck ~ which is nothing to make light of in this day and age) and it is nice to finally see him get what he deserves.  I am sure that the other candidates are as frustrated as we are elated, and we sympathize because we have been there, but this is Ronnie's time to celebrate and we are doing just that!

Congratulations, Ronnie!