Texas transfer

This was written back in January:

After about 3.5 cumulative hours of waiting in line in state registration and licensing offices, we are newly-minted Texans now. The moving process was pretty overwhelming, but it went well largely because of the help of our loving One Harbor community group, our wonderful Classical Conversations campus, and of course, the dear grandparents who helped us in spite of the fact that we were moving away from most of them. It also helped that we were moving towards our best friends (whom we visited on our TX trip in November).

After the moving truck had emptied our home and we were driving out of New Bern, I felt really grateful for our years there. Yes, it is a small town (especially compared to Orlando or Houston), but it was a safe and welcoming place for us and our kids. It was knowable; there was a finiteness to it that made you feel like you could get a handle on it, and once you got past the fact that it didn’t have as much as you wished for, it was kind of relaxing to just not have as many choices.

Anyway, I saw a sign on the way out of town that said “Future Interstate 42” and it got me thinking about new highways. I prayed that God would use the next chapter in Texas to make new highways in my heart: things that I know, not just mentally, but that I have learned experientially, over and over if necessary, that make my faith deeper and richer. For instance, I feel like the loss of babies is a pretty wide highway in my heart, one which has spanned the last 10 years. I know the signs and all the on and off ramps and what helps me survive and even be grateful for the trip. What new highways will God take me on and teach me the features of, so I can know His heart more and trust Him more? I can’t wait to find out.

I feel like we did pretty well staying flexible, especially the kids, during the move. For me the only frustration was what I called “the gap”—the distance between my expectations and the reality. We expected to move into our Houston rental home Dec. 22—the reality (we found out on moving day) was Dec. 27. We expected to celebrate Christmas in our new house–instead I scrambled to keep the Christmas presents off the moving truck so we could celebrate at my parents’ a couple days earlier. We thought everything in the new house would be ready on move day—but the gas heater was not connected yet and it stayed around 54 degrees in the lower floor of the house the first two days we were there. There were other things, but those were the big ones.

Funny thing, even though the gap would cause me tears at times, in hindsight the way things turned out in each case was almost always better than the original plan would have been. We had a nice, relaxing visit with my parents and enjoyed Christmas with them because of the moving-date delay. Because of the holidays, we would not have been able to get the heat fixed as soon as we did, so we would have shivered several more days through a Christmas in the new house if it had been the way I wanted. God is so good to us to give us the better plan, even when I am grumpy about my unmet expectations.

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