Hello! We have been married a little under three years. I am a teacher and have taught elementary, middle, and high school. I come from an Episcopal background and my wife comes from a Beachy Amish background. It seems unlikely we'd ever meet, and we consider it a miracle that we did. We consider meeting each other to be a tremendous blessing as we are older and neither of us expected to have the opportunity to get married. I'm an only child, and my parents were older and they are deceased, leaving me without family. My wife's parents are unsupportive of our mixed marriage and have refused to offer any sort of support, help, or assistance.

Circumstances have forced us to move three times in the not quite three years we've been married. It's all quite unsettling, unstable, and financially draining. In addition, our dream to have a child has been shattered due to losing three babies due to miscarriages. After each of those miscarriages, my wife had necessary surgery resulting in large medical expenses.

In addition, during this time we were literally kicked out of the two places we rented in Ohio, the first because our landlord got married only three months after we were married, and the second because our landlord decided to sell the house after only living there a little over a year. At this point, a teaching opportunity presented itself in Pennsylvania, which seemed to be a good opportunity and a way forward. We were not aware that the private religious school requirements insisted upon us settling and plugging in quickly into our new community. Moving, finding a church home, and getting our bearings in our new area to fulfill these requirements seemed a large task to accomplish speedily. However, shortly after moving, we suffered another, our third miscarriage. At this time, only three months after moving, intense pressure from the school board prompted us to ask for more time to visit churches and to fulfill the community social requirements as my wife needed to recover emotionally and physically from a subsequent surgery resulting from the miscarriage. Unfortunately, this resulted in unattainable and highly invasive stipulations put upon us from the school board in order to renew our teaching contracts. Sadly, the end result was the contracts not being renewed.

At this point, we felt it made sense for us to relocate to the Washington, DC area (suburbs) as I had largely grown up there and it would offer familiarity to us, which we felt we needed at this time. After our contracts were not renewed, we dove into the job search/interviewing process but were unable to secure jobs in teaching before the beginning of the new school year. At this point, we are actively looking for temporary jobs there until we can begin the process of finding jobs in teaching again after the new year.

This whole thing has been a financially draining process for us as we have exhausted our savings and, in addition, no help whatsoever from my wife's family. We felt the need to ask for help here in order to make it possible for us to relocate and completely start from scratch in order to find permanence, stability, and the hope of a forever home there. We dream of settling down and putting down roots in a place that's familiar after moving continuously. We're tired. So here's to moving forward, starting over (again), and putting down roots finally. Please help us during this difficult time to be able to gain footing and find home.