The App Developer's Wife

I can not tell you how many people thought we were lunatics when they found out that Josh had quit his job, our only source of income, AFTER we had gotten married. We didn't have a place of our own, and we couldn't afford a place of our own either. And we made an agreement with Josh's father that after we had gotten married, we would move out. When Josh sent his boss an email stating that he would be leaving in a couple of weeks, his boss offered him a promotion making almost $10,000 more a year and to work from home every other Friday. Josh considered taking him up on the offer and working for 6 more months to get rid of more debt. When he texted me back and forth from his desk asking "What do you think I should do?" I answered "I think you should quit."

This is the life of an App Developer's Wife.

Josh quit his job to pursue his dream of being a self employed app developer. He wanted to create something that people loved and would want on their iPhone, and he wanted to do it for money. His goal was to live off of what he created. I supported his dream, and I had faith in him and what I knew he could do.
    Josh inspired me when I first met him, and he continues to inspire me even now. And I've always believed that he could do something really outstanding. He's too smart to work for anyone else but himself, and he doesn't have a High School Diploma.
Yes. I told him to quit. Because we're too young to put our dreams on hold and pick them back up once we retire. There's too much beauty in the world to see. There's too many people we haven't met, encouraged, ministered to, laughed with, etc... There's too much life to be had to hang it on a hook to enjoy later. Plus he studied iOS Development for years! And here we were with a lump of money given to us from the wedding that we could easily live off of for a couple of months and pay off a chunk of our debt. It doesn't get any better than that. What we needed was time to learn, time to build, time away from distractions. So, Josh quit his 9 to 6 job, and we packed our stuff and moved out of his father's house, and ran away to Tennessee for a couple of months and stayed with Josh's mother and other siblings.

Josh buckled down and finished over 15 tutorial videos (some lasting an hour) over the 3 weeks. He looked at his old app that he had asked to take off of someone else's hands. iTextspeed. And decided to rebuild it, translate it into a more readable language (Swift), and make it easier to use. He decided to make an iTextSpeed 2.
And the nights have been long, and mornings were non-existent. I struggled to stay awake with him, as he typed away long past 2 in the morning. Josh's determination was made of steel.
I made a attempt to learn Swift and quite a few tutorials on Core graphics, UIDynamics, and other animations (because that's the part of coding that interests me, plus I love the math that's involved.) I am rather proud to say that I am the one that made the graph on the results page of iTextSpeed. And in the upcoming iTextSpeed 2, I made the speedometer that can be found on the results page. Yes, you've read that correctly, we haven't submitted iTextSpeed 2 yet. Our goal was for it to be out and in the App Store by the beginning of August... it is now August the 25th and down to our last week in Tennessee. We are tying loose ends, catching last minute bugs, and trying to learn marketing overnight. You have to be crazy to want to be an App Developer, but mind you, me and Josh are a couple of lunatics.

Since I know you guys must be curious by now to see who is this magnificent man I married, I invite you to take a look at him. He's rather adorable but over all, very inspirational. I'm excited to see what he does with his very own webpage especially when he writes the story of how he got a hold of iTextSpeed which I promise, IT'S WORTH READING!

The App Developer's Wife. She's a dame at home for sure. She's massaging her husband's shoulders when he gets stuck on a "Build Fail" issue. She's spreading butter over bread for him when he says he hasn't eaten anything yet. She wakes up in the middle of the night and notices that he's not in bed yet, and goes fishing for him in the dark.

Yes. Hello World. We are The App Developer's Wives.

Changed and Changing.

It is some time after New Year's Day, and these are the words that come to mind "Changed and changing". I am fully aware that I can not change the literary definition of these words, but the meaning of these words to me have...changed (for lack of a better word). They mean "I ran, and I am still running". "I am trained, but I am still training." I have distance behind me, but still a long way to go." Without a doubt, 2014 is a year I will not soon forget.

God is good. I've learned through experience that God does answer your prayers. I've also learned that some of God's greatest blessings come in the form of unanswered prayers. Right now, I could think of a few prayers I've made in the past that I'm grateful to God for not picking up and letting me go to voicemail. I'm grateful because at the time, I did not consider God's plan for me and was only concerned with what I wanted. 

   I've prayed for a certain situation to work out in my favor because the outcome was something I felt I wanted more than anything in the world. If God had made this come true for me, I would not be where I am today: engaged to a God loving man, striving together to understand God more, wanting to learn how to listen to God. My heart was not in the right place when God led me to Josh. It was intimidating at first to hear from him that he wanted God to be in the center of his life. At that instant, I thought "well, this isn't going to last..." And I didn't assume that because I did not believe that there was a God. I was raised Catholic and went to a Catholic Church, I participated in Lent, I was baptized as a child, and I did my first communion. I believed that there was a God, but I thought that my relationship with Josh would not last because I hardly read the bible, I prayed only when I needed something, and I didn't strive to be like Jesus. 

   What I've realized since then is that every relationship I've had before Josh was empty because it WAS NOT surrounding God. Now how do you like that? Lesson learned.
 Have you ever learned something new that changed you? Have you ever considered the fact that you can never unlearn something? That is what my 2014 year has been about. It's been about change. Over the past year God had me exercise my patience, understanding, faith, trust, and my love. There is no way that I can be the same. My relationships have meaning, the music I listen to has meaning, the days I've been unemployed sitting at home have more meaning! I now know what it means to sing to God "You are worthy of all praise..."God is Lord of all! Yes, I've heard it before, but I feel it now written in heart the God is Lord of all! Praise be to God! And to His son, Jesus Christ! He is the master of time and space and holds the entire solar system in His hands, and yet He listens to our simplest prayers like "Oh Lord, please let Josh make the bus!"
   Like I've said before, I am changed, but not done changing. I no longer want who I was. No longer do I want to hold myself back because of what I think of myself, instead, I want to focus on who God says I am.

God bless.