A few days after Sadie's poetry competition, Matt and I left for Chicago for yet another interview for him. He had a few leads in the cities and was talking to several groups there and we had just gotten back from an interview in Boulder, CO a few weeks prior. Nothing in the cities seemed to be panning out in a timely fashion and our time in CO was fairly unconvincing either way. The offer in CO was good, not great, and the practice was a decent one although Matt and the guy who owned the practice both feared that Matt might be bored there. So we left CO leaving the door open there but also not fully convinced that we were supposed to go there. Our prayers leading up to our trip to Chicago were that the Lord would make it very clear to us whether this would be a good fit. We specifically prayed that it would either be really horrible or really great, making it more clear for us since we felt like we didn't have a lot of clarity going in to the weekend. It seemed like we might have several decent options but nothing that really excited Matt.
We left for Chicago on a Wednesday night and drove down to the north shore area. One of the head partners, Lowell Weil Jr, offered to let us stay at their house while Matt spent the next two days interviewing with them and seeing the practice. (First off, that should have been a clue right away--I mean, how many people let their interviewee stay at their own house?!) Matt spent the entire day on Thursday in meetings and seeing their various locations. He ended the day with a dinner with all the physicians on Thursday night. Yet when we finally went to bed that night, I knew it was a good thing that he was excited to talk about his day rather than being exhausted from what would normally be a very draining day for him. Friday was more of the same for Matt but I spent the day with Lowell's wife Wendy, who drove me around the area and gave me the inside scoop on different neighborhoods, schools, etc. Spending an entire day with someone you've just met can be daunting to think about, but I felt like I had known her for years and we had a great time together. We ended the day with a dinner with the partners and their wives at a local country club. This was a completely foreign concept to us--the fact that the partners not only wanted to spend time with their wives but also cared to get to know me and spend time with Matt and I as a couple was a new, and very refreshing concept compared to where we were coming from. The dinner was so wonderful and literally blew our minds away. Everyone at the table had mutual respect for one another and seemed to truly enjoy being together. They were interested in getting to know Matt as a person, not just a physician, and also cared equally about getting to know me. It was such an 'easy' dinner and we felt like we were spending time with friends rather than in the midst of an interview.
Matt and I left the dinner on Friday night and headed downtown, where we had planned to spend the weekend debriefing on the last two days and enjoying a hopefully-relaxing time away from home. And to say it was amazing would be an understatement. We stayed at the Trump Hotel and had a gorgeous room with amazing views of the city and unbelievable service (which I guess one should expect when staying at a Trump establishment, but you never really know). But what made our time in the city really wonderful was reflecting on the last few days with the Weils. It truly was a gift from the Lord that He was making our next steps very clear to us. Up to this point, we didn't feel confident about where the Lord was leading us but that all ended after this trip. We were not only able to reflect on how great the past few days had been and what a good fit Matt seemed to be for their group, but we were also able to see what a blessing it was that Matt had been in the cities for the past 4 1/2 years. Despite the struggles we were experiencing, the past 4 years allowed Matt to gave professional respect outside of his current group, which made his move to the Weil group even more attractive to them than if he had come to Chicago directly out of fellowship. Lowell Jr. now saw Matt as a peer and told him that, which was a huge compliment to Matt. Yet if we had come directly here after fellowship, any success Matt had would probably have been perceived as being due to the Weils and their achievements. Obviously, we know that any success Matt has had is completely due to the Lord and His work, but to be able to already see why the Lord needed to take us to Chicago via the cities was a blessing that the Lord was beginning to show us already. It was a great weekend and just looking at these pictures brings back such great memories of 4 days where we felt the Lord so clearly present and guiding us.
Our view of Lake Michigan and the river from our room
A trip back to one of our all-time favorite restaurants, GT Fish & Oyster
(home of the original waitlist)
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