Still Putting One Foot In Front of the Other

You know, I really like to blog.  I'm not very disciplined about it, and sometimes I'll go long spells without blogging.  It's not because I'm suffering some sort of blogger burn out.  I just don't think I'm very interesting.  My life is pretty mundane most of the time.  I usually get on here and update a little thing or two, or tell you what I'm thinking or some great idea.  I kind of like doing that, but I don't want to bore people (as if there were a lot of people actually reading my blog that I might bore).  But still.... I tend to not blog often because I haven't got a lot going on.

For example:
Nothing really new, just renewed excitement!  My last post was sort of half excited and half out of gas.  My loneliness, my lack of sleep and the confusion of the moment sort of threw me for a loop.  It's a much more emotional time than I had anticipated.  I'm not sad to be leaving, or mooning over "all those good ol' times" we spent here for the last 19 years.  No, I'm more -- well -- testy.  I'm a bit short and impatient.   I have no desire to be here or to interact with 'here' any more.  Home has shifted in my mind and gone back east with my husband, so I am tending toward being detached, and I am morphing into sort of a hermit.  A few more weeks and I should be back to my perky self.

We are well on the way to moving, now, so I'm spending more of my time being happy and excited, even though I don't really want to be social.  It dawned on me that we're talking about weeks now, and not months or years any more.  That is very exciting!  It has been a long wait.  Things are a lot different than we had imagined.  The plans have changed many times over the course of our dreaming stage, as I like to call it.  It has turned out much differently than we'd thought it might, and we're going to a place we hadn't considered, but we are sure it is the right move to make, and we're happy to be going.

We're going to a little town about fifteen or twenty minutes outside of Fort Worth, Texas.  It's funny, I'd never considered Texas.  I don't know anything about it and I've never really been there other than to  pass through en route to someplace else. I have spent some serious internet time in the late night hours with the little Google Earth man, walking the streets of small Texas towns, looking at the trees and the neighborhoods.  Technology is wonderful.  It looks nice, what I can see of it.  It looks quaint and rural.  That's just what I was hoping for.

I think we have decided to have the travel trailer hauled by someone who hauls things for a living.  We have considered having my husband get another truck and pull it back, then I could pull the luggage trailer with the truck we have.  That would solve two problems:  getting the trailer there and getting my husband a truck. He needs one.  It would also save the money we will have to pay for the hired guy to haul it.   However, my husband would have to take that week off of work and lose that pay, as well as decide whether or not to buy a truck there, drive it here and then back, or come here, find something quickly (not a great plan) and then drive it back.  We decided we wouldn't save much by the time he missed the week's worth of work, and then if he needs to take a few days off to help get it all set back up he can at least spend it with me, at home.

It's all starting to sink in and feel real.   I like it.

Texas.  Who'da thunk it?  We may move on from there someday, then again we may fall in love with it and stay forever.  Who knows.   For now it all sounds great.  We're just going to play it by ear.

The Turning of the Page

We're moving.

No, really this time.  We are.  In a month or so.  In fact, one of us is already gone.  I almost can't believe it myself. 

Would you like to hear the story of how this all came to pass?   Of course you would!  I'll skip past a lot of the preliminary whys and wherefores until another blog, (a story that is well worth the telling in and of itself).  I'll just back up enough to say that beyond all the hoping and dreaming for LO! these many years that we have wanted to move, we've known we were actually going to be moving for some time now.  We weren't sure exactly when, but sometime within a year was the plan.  Each time we'd set a general time to make the move, something would come up and stall it again, so that estimated year would keep extending itself out into the future a little further, a little further.... 

Fast forward from there to three weeks ago...

We recently met a friendly couple at our new church.  I'll call them Bill and Sue.  They were just easy to be around, and when you're new to a place, it's always nice to find someone you can talk to.  We all just sort of 'hit it off'.  It was really very nice to see my husband enjoying the company of a man, a potential friend.  He spends so much of his time alone, and he hasn't had a good friend nearby in a long time.  Me? I am much more outgoing, and I have a lot of acquaintances, but I don't really have many friends, either, especially now that we are in a new church and all.    

Shortly after we met them, Bill took off and started driving a truck someplace out of state and had already been gone for a few weeks.  Obviously, that gave me and Sue a lot of common ground and fodder for conversation, so we were hitting it off, too, but my husband and I were a bit disappointed that Bill had to leave so soon after we'd met them.   


Then one week (three weeks ago) he came back home to be with his family.  On that Sunday morning before church, he and my husband were standing around in the back of the sanctuary chatting. He began to tell him all about his new job, how great it was, that he loved it, the pay was good, on and on and on.  He tells him it's a truck driving job, so I figured the conversation was just small talk between a couple of guys.  No way does my husband really want to talk about a truck driving job.  He doesn't ever want to drive another truck!  In fact, the main reason we started to seriously consider moving to begin with was to lower our outgo in order to get him out of the truck!  He's just making casual conversation on a common subject with a new friend.

So Bill says he can get him on with the company he's driving for if he's interested.  I looked at Sue and laughed out loud, I think.  I'm pretty sure I said, something like, "Oh, right!"   I know my husband, and if he dislikes anything more than trucking, it's change, especially sudden, sweeping change.  He's not given to making quick decisions by any means.  I'm thinking to myself, "He's not really entertaining this notion, he's just being polite and enjoying the man's company."

Sooooo... he said O.K.

O.K.

Just like that. 


I was stunned.  I had to shake myself, and check my surroundings.  I really believed I was sort of dreaming, or at least misunderstanding some important part of the conversation.  I wasn't.  I looked at Sue and asked her if he just said he wanted the job?  He had indeed.  He said it.  He wanted to take the job.  He told the guy he was going to have to pray about it and talk to me, but we knew.  Both of us knew right away, and before we went to bed that night the course of our lives had changed.

Long story short, we talked, prayed, agreed, called the guy, called his boss, and within 2 actual, literal calendar weeks he had put in notice with his job here, tied up loose ends, gotten his ducks in a row, flown out from Vegas, and started his new job.  It was all so fast and wonderful and strange!  He went to Texas and he's a-comin' for me as soon as we're able to finish up all the details and make arrangements to move out.   


Fast forward again to today.  He has been on his new job for a week.  My new job is to take care of all the details and loose ends here, prepare everything for the trip and be ready for him when he comes back to get me, but it is a slow process.  I have to wait for income in order to do anything, so I have been mostly planning and waiting.  Oh, I fix a little detail here, and tie another up over there, but the big projects, the ones that are keeping me stuck here and away from my husband, are waiting on a few thousand dollars to come into the coffers. Tires and servicing for the truck, leftover bills, travel expense money and the like.  There's nothing for it but time, I guess.

It's hard because I really miss him.  A lot.  More than I thought I would.  I know, that sounds bad, as if I didn't think I would miss him much.  No, I knew I would, but the old "all things for the greater good," and "time will pass quickly while we're busy," theory would help us through, right?  No, not so much.  It's slow and hard and I can't see him or help him or even talk to him a whole lot.  I am just praying that the new job brings in the big bucks fast, because I want to go be there with him.    

Meanwhile I have lapsed into some sort of waking coma.  I am excited to go and I mean to get all the details done, but I sort of fell out of my own life and went numb.  I lose track of days. I've lost interest in everything that was normal.  I don't want to go to church.  I don't want to see my friends.  I don't want to do anything.  I just want to go be with my husband.  I don't really seem to be able to explain it very well.  This isn't coming out the way I mean for it to now that I'm writing it down.  I don't mean that I don't care about all those things, I just haven't been myself at all.  The whole family dynamic thing has changed.  The symbiosis is out of whack.  Things aren't right.  Nothing matters.  Nothing except getting back together.

So, I woke up today and decided to shake myself before any more time passes and one week runs into another, as weeks are wont to do, and time gets completely away  from me. I'm going to get things going.  Even if it's only something small, like sorting one more box, or just chasing down information, something is going to get done.

The overall list is something like this:

• Get a  set of tires for the back of the truck. 
• Get new tires on the big trailer. 
• Get a set of stabilizer bars for the luggage trailer.  
• Get the truck serviced for the road and the big haul. 
• Save enough so that if the fuel pump needs to be replaced I can do it before we go.  
• Save enough cash to pay for the gas and road expenses, plus a little for emergencies. 
• Pay the credit cards off... again.
• Look for a second vehicle.

I figure about six thousand dollars should cover it, give or take.  The problem is that we have to live between now and then; eat, pay bills, put gas in the truck, all the regular everyday things we always have to pay for while saving back the money to go. So we may  be looking realistically at 6 weeks or so. It is by no means impossible, just too slow to suit me.  I want to trim it to 3 weeks.  I want to go now.

I'm tightening my purse strings to the absolute choking point!  We may be eating lots of beans and rice.  There's not going to be a lot of eating out, Microsoft points, iTunes cards or driving around.  I really meant to stop all but the necessary driving, and now my son's ride from work has come to an end so I have to take him and pick him up.  That was something of a setback.  We used the credit cards that I worked so hard to pay off to get the airline ticket and so that my husband could have something to live off of until his pay starts coming in.  I'll have to pay that stuff off again.  That was something of a setback.

Honestly, I just prayed and asked God to make a way where there seems to be no way.  A bona fide miracle would be good.  I'd truly appreciate it, Lord.  I'll be faithful to give you the glory.

I'm not worried.  I'm not afraid.  I'm not unsure, doubting, nervous, edgy, having second thoughts: none of that.  I just miss being with my husband and I'm ready to go.  I've been ready to go for decades, and now he's already gone.

I. j.u.s.t. w.a.n.t. t.o. g.o.

Once this has passed it will all be as good as if it had happened on the very day I prayed for it, but for now it's one foot in front of the other, and according to Mark 4:26-29 I just need to sleep and rise; relax and trust.  He'll take care of it in His way and in His time.


Mark 4:26-29 ^"And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; And should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how.  For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.  But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come."

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?