Thoughts Upon Bluebonnets: The One Year Mark of Our Texas Move

I guess I could say it has been interesting, but truth be told that would be a bit of a lie ... big learning experience, yeah; big changes, yes thanks; interesting ... hmm, not so much.   I feel like my new life is a bit dull, but I guess foundations are that, dull, we aren't quite into the walls raising and the decorating part of this scenario.  I think this last year has been the hardest of my life.  Being remade is never easy, but I don't think I have ever been completely scrapped to have God start from scratch.  That, however, is how this year has felt.  I have a new job, a new home, a new city and state.  Thanks to the chaos of this move I have new to me furniture that is no where near as nice as my old stuff.  I have a new church congregation, a new grocery, and a new set of things to get used to, and usually none of that would bug, but when the only, and I mean only thing that hasn't changed is your spouse, it is hard to get in the swing of things.  So here is the one thing I have learned, I knew it before, but now I KNOW it for sure.   It is all just stuff.

Yep, stuff, and stuff is ultimately unimportant.  I could go into a lengthy discussion on what I have learned from this, but I don't think this is the forum for that.  It is still brewing.  In any case I came across a quote that perfectly explains my growing pains.  C.S. Lewis was wise:

Imagine yourself as a living house.  God comes in to rebuild that house.  At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing.  He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised.  But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense.  What on earth is He up to?  The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of -- throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent college: but He is building a palace.

I have tried to remember this as the last few months have become increasingly discouraging.   Here is a nutshell account of things ... please don't see it as a gripe session, as that is not my intent.  I just want to explain things.    A year ago, upon our move,  I had a job teaching here in Denton, but when I got to Texas the grant that was supposed to pay my salary had been misappropriated, so suddenly, no job.  Doug and I had planned a leisurely search for a teaching job for him, and then Texas, one of the, up until last Fall, bastions of safety for teachers states, hit bottom and laid off thousands of teachers, so no luck there.  That meant we were both unemployed, so Doug searched for ANYTHING.  He got a job at the hospital, not ideal, but better than nothing.  After a crazy long search I picked up my job with AggData, which allows me to work at home.  That is nice since we now only have one car.  It isn't full time, and the pay is not ideal,  but we thought it would be ok, if we spent time finding Doug a better job, and I worked all the hours I could.  Well time has passed, but no luck, and in the last two months, Doug was laid off from his job, and is once again in job search mode.  I am back to keeping us alive on peanuts.  The end.

With that mess out of the way here is what has happened ... I notice the stars; I prune my roses; I watch Dr. Who; I write poetry; I read really good books, and I think, probably too much.   Friends have been lost and gained, illness has overtaken my ravaged body, diseases have been found and conquered, recipes have been found, brownies have been made (gluten free of course) and I have learned what really matters again.  My husband is my hero; he never gives up or gives in.  He believes so deeply in us that nothing gets in his way, and that more than anything is what I have learned .... that all good things have levels, and I have grown in ways I could never have imagined possible a year ago.

Several of the people that live in in Texas are saddened that I don't like it better.  One friend found her true home here, several of my friends found their spouses here; people I love have had children and the foundations of their lives built on this soil, and they love it.   My foundation is elsewhere in red rock and mountain height, yet I clearly see the beauty of the springtime Texan warmth.  My flowers flourish in the dusky light, and I love the little moments of perfect glorious beauty.   Memories of green growing things.  And it is NOT that I don't like Texas, it is that she has been a cruel stepmother of a learning experience.  Which means I may grow to love her all the more for the hard times I bore at her hand, but for now we are still at odds, though I do see a chance for a better understanding sometime in the future. And I would like to share why.

For years I have had a dream of a little girl walking hand in hand with me through a field of blue flowers.  It is vibrant, and real enough to breathe in the scent of the bloom and taste the calm warmth of the sun.  She is laughing, and I am so happy that I can almost see heaven.

Seven years of marriage,  six miscarriages, and a sure understanding that adoption will have to be the way we have more than one child, since anything else would be beyond miraculous.  I know our kids are here; in fact I felt that was a lot of the reason for the move, and perhaps that is why I am so frustrated, but here is the miracle ... the reason I know God is listening.  At the lowest point of this journey, when I had given up understanding the mess of the last year, I found myself in a car with friends, turning a corner and there I saw the field filled with bluebonnets, which I had never seen anywhere except my dream, and I knew that I would find my kids, and that all the trial was to prepare me for the patience and trial of giving them a better life than they had before us.  So if Texas has only given me sorrow thus far, I feel sure she will soon deliver the goods that my friends have been trying to convince me exist. And I HATE that is sounds so cheesy, and that words, my best friends, betray me in this particular instance.  Se la vie.  It does not change the truth of the thing . . .

So we are holding our breath for the answer to this year of questions.   I hope we have some answers soon.