D-Day

Today was a culmination of months of planning and emotional turmoil. The movers have been and gone, and on this day we had to finally leave our jobs; losing the financial security we have had for 9 years (Kelly) and 11 years (Christian). To complicate things Christian has not yet even received his Visa confirmation yet, so we are relying a great deal on faith alone, although we have been doing just that for some months.
Our plans have been kept strictly confidential all summer for fear of losing our jobs prematurely, but now we can tell what happened from the very beginning.
In April 2007 we went to Texas to visit Kelly's family, and whilst there fell absolutely in love with our dream home. We had spoken a million times about moving back to the US, but until then it had only been talk. Christian immediately saw the benefits of taking this leap, although Kelly as always was sceptical and paralysed by fear. However, every fear we had was addressed in turn, making us think Someone had plans for us, and we found ourselves writing out a check for the deposit.
In the ensuing months we proceeded to put our home in Biggin Hill on the market, at a time when the UK housing market was slowing for the first time in 4 years. Luck was still with us however, as the 20% deposit we required since we were from overseas was sent over the day the pound hit the $2.00 mark in over 17 years.
Otherwise, it was a great deal of waiting, as we continued with our lives, going to work, going home, seeing friends and family. It started to come to a head in August when our buyers disappeared without exchanging contracts. In England, the buyer is in no way obligated to buy the home till that day, when they leave a 10% deposit. So as they were missing we feared we might have lost them and even relisted our house for a few days. Luckily, they reappeared and finally exchanged in the afternoon on Tuesday 4 September.
Then on Thursday we could delay the inevitable no longer. We went into work around noon, as we had an appointment in the morning, and resigned. Although I had known it was to happen it was still one of the hardest things I had ever done, especially because we didn't have the absolute assurance of future employment anytime in the very near future. Christian was out in minutes although for Kelly it took longer. At 4pm the HR rep walked Kelly down the escalator, she badged out at security, handed her badge over, and walked out the door for the last time.
We had not eaten a thing all day and immediately went to a McDonald's, as it was the only thing by the station. We ate a little as we waited for the train, both with massive headaches from the strain. Then hand in hand we got on the train and said goodbye to our daily commute from London.