Hoosier-tucky

Growing up in Louisville, we always made fun of Indiana. The topography (or lack thereof), the corn, and the sports teams. Well, my family and I have been Indiana residents ourselves for a year now, and it didn’t take me nearly as much time to learn they’ve been making fun of Kentucky for just as long.

There’s a common suffix Hoosiers use to describe something that is unsophisticated, bucolic, or red neck. Just tack on “tucky” at the end of the word, and there you have it. All good corn eaters know what you mean. The rural town next to us is Bargersville, but an outsider might believe the actual name is Bargertucky. And don’t be fooled by Morgantucky. The community 10 miles southwest of Franklin is really called Morgantown.

How did we get here in the land of the pork tenderloin?

It’s an improbable story none of us saw coming.

In 2016, Amanda finished her masters degree at Xavier University and passed her boards. She was now certified to be a nurse practitioner, and we were new parents of our baby girl, Reed.

The job hunt commenced right away. Between the two of us, we’d been living in Cincinnati for a combined 10 years, and we were more than happy in the Queen City, so Amanda began searching for opportunities there. We’d always heard the market for NPs was oversaturated in Cincy, and after several months of applying, that truth was becoming more and more apparent.

The writing was on the wall – we were going to have to broaden the search.

That did the trick. Within days of opening up the job hunt to a national scale, Amanda landed a half a dozen interviews. She had opportunities lined up all over the place, and we knew moving was inevitable.

We were both okay with relocation, but it would come at a cost, as it almost always does. I was a full time organizational psychologist working in the training department of a large local real estate company. It was a great job with outstanding people, and I grew tremendously as a professional there.

However, even with a significant promotion in the works, my earning potential wasn’t comparable to Amanda’s as a NP. We made the decision as a family that this would be the season we would focus on her career. It was a no-brainer at the time.

In addition to my full time job, I was a minister at Echo Church, a small urban congregation in the neighborhood of Walnut Hills. As I was working on my masters in divinity degree at Cincinnati Christian University, I connected with Steve Carr, the founding elder of Echo. Steve and the members at Echo gave me something I will never forget – an opportunity to jump into the ministry field, something that is near impossible to do for an Ohio transplant who was raised Catholic. I will forever be indebted to Echo for the experience my family and I had there.

Leaving Cincinnati meant leaving Echo, the people we loved, the people who gave us a chance. That was the most difficult part about this transition. But we knew we had to go.

A week after Amanda started applying outside Cincinnati, she accepted an offer for a NP job in Burlington, North Carolina. Burlington is a nice town nestled in the Piedmont region, 30 minutes from Durham and even closer to Greensboro. We had a couple family members there. It was a little further south but still within 8 hours of Louisville. This was going to be a perfect fit!

We called our parents and told some close friends – the Wheatleys were moving to North Carolina.

Or at least, that was what we believed for the next 24 hours.

When Amanda had a follow up phone call with the hiring manager the next day, she learned some more information about the job’s duration and schedule, some information that made the move a little less exciting. They wanted her to be a temporary floating NP working five days a week with no home clinic – a tough gig for a brand new mom in a new city. We still have no idea how these details weren’t communicated from the start, but now we had a big decision on our hands.

That same week, Amanda heard back from another job she applied for – this one was labeled “Indianapolis”. She was offered a NP position at a clinic outside Indy, a place within 2 hours of Cincinnati and Louisville. After some prayer and conversation, Amanda let the Burlington folks know the new details were a deal breaker for us, and we’d instead be moving to… Indiana.

The hiring manager gave Amanda a choice – Greenwood or Franklin. We knew nothing about either town. So we googled and realized that Greenwood was a little closer to downtown. When Amanda called back the next day to accept the NP job in Greenwood, the hiring manager said, “I’m sorry – the other person we hired beat you to it. You’ll be working at the Franklin clinic.”

Sounds good. See you there.

The day after we found out we were moving, I called Steve to tell him we were leaving Cincinnati, and I’d have to resign at Echo. To this day, that was the most gut wrenching phone call I have ever made.

When I shared our news, Steve graciously said, “We’re sorry to see you go, but we’re so happy for your family. You served our church well. We are better off because of the Wheatleys’ time at Echo.”

And in the next breath, Steve asked, “So where are you all moving?”

I responded, “It’s a little town outside Indianapolis. You probably won’t know it.”

Steve said, “Which town is it?”

“Franklin, Indiana,” I said.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Steve said, stunned. “My brother-in-law and sister have a church in Franklin. He called me last week to see if I knew any ministers looking for an opportunity.”

Do you see what happened here?

I called Steve to resign and reluctantly move to a town I’d never heard of in Indiana. I had zero job leads. I was mentally prepared to do the stay-at-home-dad thing while I showered Indianapolis with resumes. My future was a massive question mark.

And in the same phone call, mere seconds after resigning, Steve not only knew our new little town – he knew what my next job would (probably) be.

That brother-in-law was Josh Cadwell, and that church was Victory Christian Church. My start date ended up being before Amanda’s start date. Our workplaces are less than two miles apart. Most people still think we moved to Franklin for me!

If you call all that coincidence, you’re either trying too hard or you haven’t been to Franklin. A flat, corn eating, bad-sports-teams-loving town in the state I grew up making fun of.

A town that I now proudly call home.