Learning Slowly
As we approach this summer of 2008, it is hard to believe that we have now been in Texas for eight years.
our lives are full. We are content and happy . So much is going so well. And though we face occasional trials, we are not victims of our circumstances. Life is good!
It was not always so. Our first years in Texas were dark years, stained with dissatisfaction. It is amazing and instructive to look back and see the changes God has wrought in our hearts.
When we were mapping out our futures, way back in the ‘90s, Texas did not make our short list. It didn’t make any list. We had every conceivable point worked out, in writing , and the numbers looked good, and the obligatory sacrifice short-lived and workable. So when an unexpected job change brought us to the Houston area in 2000, we were undone. We hit a terrible low. That was only the beginning.
The events of September 11 forever changed the landscape of our “planned” future. In the home, infertility tenaciously dogged our steps, as did rumor of an impending Iraq deployment. We remained trapped in the West, far from all we understood and loved. We searched in vain for a church like the beloved gathering we had left behind us, and carried on friendless and spiritually dry. In the pressure, disappointment, and confusion, our marriage seemed hardly capable of surviving, much less thriving. Hope on most fronts seemed gone, left behind somewhere on the East Coast.
We tried repeatedly over the ensuing years to decamp and get back East. Every single door we attempted to open, each lead we followed, resulted in a resounding “NO!“ Through this, we should have grown prayerful, instead we grew weary. We thought that we were being more than fair with God in our demands. (Note to self: 1. “demands ” and “God” should not be used in the same sentence unless contemplating what He demands of us… 2. qualifying demands as “fair” fail to make them palatable to a sovereign God.) But we thought at the time that we were not asking too much. We were open to several options, we had happily lived in North and South Carolina, Virginia and Florida. We would also consider Alabama, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia. We simply wanted access to the places where we had once been happy, where life had made sense. We were willing to be so accommodating, no specifics, Lord, just somewhere back on that side of the nation, where things seemed …. manageable. Though He didn’t move us from Texas, He did not abandon us, but was faithful to strengthen our marriage and our family in the trial.
So we spent eight years in our own personal wilderness, longing for the past, wishing we were back on the East Coast (our Egypt), missing or maybe dismissing the many Texas blessings being poured out by a loving God.
Reading about the Israelites is lot like paging back through one of my old journals. I am so much like them that it is frightening. I read their stories of wandering in the wilderness, and I’m embarrassed and convicted. But in those first Texas years, I was blinded to the similarity between me and my spiritual ancestors. I could and did read about their whining, their “grumbling”, to use the Biblical term, and I would feel personally affronted on God’s behalf for their brazen thanklessness. I heard, during those years, excellent topical and expository sermons on the grumbling Israelites. I would dutifully write insightful comments in the margin of my Bible, underline with a bold and indignant hand their many sins, read all the footnotes in an attempt to grasp their stiff-necked stupidity, and marvel at their ungrateful hearts and their unbelievably short memories.
Change came when we finally stopped struggling. We let go of longing for what we didn’t have, and embraced what we did. I don’t remember the exact moment that it occurred to us, but at some point we realized that we had been placed in Texas for His good pleasure. We realized that we had to find satisfaction and pleasure in these surroundings as we enjoyed the environment given to us. With surprising speed, we began to see our lives through a different lens. One day, we realized that we actually liked it here! One day we realized that we had been blessed with dear, dear friends who we would not want to live without. Beauty from ashes.
One of the last bastions of my folly was my determination to garden here as if I was still on the East Coast. I planted based on my North Carolina gardening books, and tended my plants as if I was in the Tarheel, not the Lone Star state. I watched every year as my tomatoes were destroyed by aphids and stinkbugs, and we choked on bitter cucumbers and dwarfed peppers. Last year, I finally gave up and began to study the finer points of vegetable gardening in Texas. I quickly discovered that almost every bit of gardening knowledge I had was useless here.
May I introduce Year Round Vegetables, Fruits and Flowers For Metro Houston - A Natural Organic Approach Using Ecology by Bob Randall, Ph.D. I have now read many books on Texas gardening, and by far, this one is the best for this part of the state. I borrowed it from the library so often that my family finally bought it for me. I use it more than any other book, and with its help, we have grown beautiful tomatoes, basil, garlic chives, radishes, lettuce, beets, turnips, figs, tangerines, and Mexican Mint Marigold, also known as “Texas Tarragon“, which is lovely in salad.
Now here we are, welcoming another Texas summer, in this the year of Our Lord 2008. I am grinning as I look out on my tomato plants, but as I think about this eight year lesson in acceptance and thanksgiving, I wonder how it could have taken me so long to smile. May my next class be accelerated learning!
