I know I don’t have a ton of readers, but some of you might be wondering after last week’s post: Okay, what does she mean she’s moving to Texas? Didn’t she just move? What’s up that she’s moving again? Why Texas? (Oh, sorry, the last one is my question.)

Well, here’s the long and short of it. I have a very good friend in Texas whose father owns and operates a hospice care. Two weeks ago he called me up, told me his office manager is leaving, and offered me the job. I was so surprised I didn’t know what to say. (My friend told me later he thought he shocked me – he did.) I told him I’d let him know in a few days.

You would have thought someone asked me to take a job on the moon. The thing is, going back to office work in the state of Texas was the last thing I was considering. It doesn’t seem point in the direction I want to go. Texas? It’s even more flat, and more treeless, and a lot hotter than Indiana. (Not to mention all the concrete, shopping malls, theatres, and restaurants buzzing with activity 24/7.) I also know it. Like I told my parents, if the job had been in Arizona I wouldn’t have thought twice – at least that’s somewhere I haven’t been. And office work? Well, some people think filing and putting stuff in order is a great gift. To me, it’s a way of life.

But it’s a new adventure. I have a place to live (with my grandfather) until the Lord moved in another direction. I already have friends there. I do know my way around. I know my boss (even if I don’t know much about the business). And he offered it to me! “Aren’t you flattered, Melissa?” Mom asked a hundred times. “Yes, yes,” I waved that aside, “but…”

I had a lot of buts. I had a lot of mixed signals. One moment I thought I could do it. The next I thought I should just wait for what I want. Not that I don’t intend to write most of my spare moments. And not that I can’t work with kids at whatever church I attend. (Which is something y’all could keep in prayer – do you know how many churches there are in Texas?) Finally, I could stand it no longer. I cried out to the Lord. “I don’t care!” I told Him. “But, please, I have got to have peace about this. Go or stay. Give me peace.”

He did. And I’m going. My first day of work is August 17. I will drive down there and arrive the Thursday or Friday before. I don’t consider it a “real” move because I’m not packing up my room and moving everything down there. Just most of my clothes, some of my books, DVDs, CDs, and “comfort things” like a couple of stuffed pandas and photographs. I don’t really want to stay in Texas very long, but if the Lord has other plans (which, apparently, He does and I ought to know that anyhow by now) and an apartment or whatever is in store for later then I’ll really move. Until then, I’m still hoping I can settle somewhere with mountains, trees, winter, and snow.

So keep me in your prayers as I make this adjustment. There are several things to be put in order here in Indiana. It’s been a while since I’ve worked a full time job. My grandfather and I both will have to get use to living with one another. I need the Lord to provide for me a church (hopefully without having to visit twenty along the way). I’ll need to learn to adjust my time so I can write and continue my pursuit of publication. I’d like to find a writer’s group, someone/place to play tennis, and I hope I don’t keel over in the Texas heat. And, no doubt, I will have a few bouts with homesickness. But, The Lord is faithful. And He doesn’t change. And He doesn’t leave me. In the end, all will be well.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

“I’m the winner!”

Happy 23rd Birthday, Daniel!

And, even though I love my brother dearly, there have been times when I wondered why I didn’t let go and let the waves take him away to sea…

Choices

Have you ever heard the hymn with the chorus that says, “If God be for us, if God be for us, if God be for us; who can be against us? Who? Who? Who? Who can be against us, against us?” I don’t think I learned it until I was an adult, but if you knew it as a child it would be a song you would never forget. The tune is catchy and the words are easy. Well, I have had that hymn playing in my head over the past couple of days.

Sometimes a thought is in our head and we don’t even realize it. I’ve had one of those for I don’t know how long, but on Sunday as I heard the sermon it suddenly showed itself in all its color. I don’t remember what brought on the light bulb exactly, but it had something to do with the truth that God is for His children and wants the best for them. I realized that while I nodded to such a truth I had not been living as if I believed it. The past several months of my life have not been easy. Lots of new things, lots of doors slamming shut, lots of wonder at what my future holds. In the back of my mind, I had come to the belief that God was somehow against me. He wouldn’t let me do anything my heart yearned to do. Or so I thought. For I ought to know how deceitful my heart is. And I do truly believe that in all the disappointments life throws at us, God – as a loving Heavenly Father – is doing what is best for His children. He is doing what is best for me. But like any child who wants to play with fire, I didn’t accept that truth.

I’ll make it plain right now that I hate making choices. I analyze things too much. I work myself up into a sweat. Pros and cons don’t pile themselves up in neat little rows to be compared. I think I make a decision, then something new pops up, and I go back to the starting line. If I ever die of a massive heart attack, you can probably bet I had a choice looming over my head.

We all have to make choices in life which we don’t want to make. Have you ever found yourself in a circumstance where you think you know exactly what you want to do? You knock on all the doors, you spend hours on projects related to it, and each door slams shut in your face. Okay. So, Plan B. This plan isn’t as sure as the other seemed and leaves room for conjecture. Well and good because as Plan A didn’t work out, you bring the lessons learned to Plan B. Then out of the blue someone hands you Plan C. Now, its workable with Plan B in some forms, but it has nothing whatever to do with Plan A, which you rather liked. Do you take Plan C and run with it? Or do you wait to see if Plan A might still pan out sometime along the way? Plan C isn’t the most appealing plan in the world. In fact, there are certain points in it you can’t stand. It doesn’t take you at all in the direction in your heart yearns to go. But it is something new, different, and everything has lessons to be learned.

Besides, it came out of no where. And doesn’t that remind you of the verse in Isaiah which tells us that God’s ways are not our ways and His thoughts are higher than ours? So, it hardly makes a bit of sense and takes you some place you don’t want to go but maybe that’s the point. Maybe its time to take up that other hymn and shout at the top of your lungs, “Trust and obey!”

And so I take up that banner, peaceful only in the knowledge that my God will not leave me. (And, I confess, praying He will not leave me in my new place very long.) For next month, I am moving to Texas.

A License to have Fun

I have lived in the state of Indiana now for eight months. Within that time I have learned how dull driving can be when there is nothing to look for. I don’t mean the endless corn and soy fields. I’m talking about license plates. For in the eight months I have been here, I have found two worth sharing:

KNITWIT

LETSROLL

A vanity plate in Indiana is more expensive than in New Hampshire, but it’s also much harder to get. If I understand it right, you have to apply for by a certain date. The government has to agree you can have it, it is issued to you, etc. But I could be wrong for I’ve been told more than one thing by the BMV that I late find out isn’t so.

Meanwhile in New Hampshire, some friends have collected vanity plates for me over the past seven months. On the list is 124, and I’m sure they found many more for they didn’t list any sport teams or business names. Here are a dozen of my favorites:

4RNSICS

WHT-EVA

CUL8R

L8RM8R

T-T4NOW

BRKALEG

RUJOKN

P8RIOT

RUNPONY (on a mustang)

TK-ACTN

W8&SEE

SNH9E

Typos

This Saturday I attended my regular bi-monthly writer’s group meeting at a local Christian bookstore. We always begin by going over the book we have been reading about writing. Then, we break up into smaller groups to hash out ideas and things. My small group has decided to pass around our work, read it and critique it. Well, as the group on Saturday was rather small we decided not to break up in small groups which means those of us who brought something to pass around got our work read aloud to the entire group. Talk about feeling a little nervous…

Of course, whenever anyone reads aloud without having looked over the manuscript first, you are guaranteed some slips of the tongue that can be quite funny. But even funnier can be the typos. And mine was the funniest:

“Only on this Friday, they all have to go straight home because some old pastor friend is visiting for dinner. They ate that. Old pastors are dull, but so is the fate of pastor’s kids.”

Suddenly my story on suffragists, and kids, and contentment turned into a story on cannibalism. Everyone was getting eaten. The population of the town depleted, and the mysterious aunt was returning in order to uncover the terrors of this nineteenth century village. Lynda remarked with a laugh, “This is beginning to sound like Hansel and Gretel!”

There was plenty of laughter to be had by all – laughter until our sides hurt. And I’m sure the customers wondered what in the world was going on. It also tied right into the chapter we had just read in our writing book. The chapter pertained to genres and Darren, the leader of the group, asked if we ever had a little fun and tried to mix up all kinds of crazy genres in our writing. I thought I hadn’t, but I guess I have: my juvenile fiction book is now historical, horror and mystery.

Yes, I know. Writers are crazy.

Today we were all in the car driving home from playing basketball at a park and a stop at Sonic. As we drove down the main road towards home, a dark blue Ford pick-up truck passed us. Caleb calls from the back:

“Dad, that’s the kind of truck I want!”

There is a moment of silence while we all study the truck in order to assess our own opinions.

“You want a Ford?” Grace wonders.

“Well, no,” Caleb admits. “And I don’t like the color either. And I don’t want the shell on it.”

“And how about the tires?” I asked.

“I think the mirrors aren’t too good either,” Mom adds.

“So you want a truck just like that but not like that?”

We’re all laughing while Caleb tries to support his choice/not-choice in that truck.

“Well, Caleb,” Dad remarks, “now you wish you just kept silent, huh?”

Do you ever feel like a "Who"?

This weekend my family and I went to the Creation Science Museum in Kentucky. I think we picked the wrong weekend, for that place was packed! Thankfully, I am not claustrophobic…just a bit impatient. And large crowds always make me feel like I’m moving too slow, so I speed read and skip things always hoping that I’m not being a bother to those waiting to read the same things. So while there were very interesting things to learn and see inside the museum, my favorite parts were the beautiful gardens (complete with rope extension bridge that was great fun to wobble over) and the planetarium.

You’ve probably been in a planetarium. You sit in comfortable, reclining chairs; the lights go out; and you’re sorely tempted to fall asleep during one of the long tirades on “billions and billions of years ago…”. Of course, there were no billions on years in a creation museum. Just the usual awe of God’s amazing universe and your speck of a part in it.

The story of Horton Hears a Who is funny, and cute, and laughable as a huge elephant tries to save the lives of a group of people living on a speck no one else can see or hear. But then you see the vastness of God’s created universe, and suddenly you feel like one of the people living on a speck that no one can see or hear. For we grow up learning that the sun is the largest, most powerful body in our solar system – and it is. And yet the starts we see in the sky are hundreds of times larger and more powerful than our sun. And the earth itself cannot even be seen from these stars. And these stars are not the end of the universe. There are stars and galaxies we cannot see even with a telescope. It just goes on and on and on. And above all that, the Bible tells us, is God’s throne.

“What is man that thou art mindful of him?” King David asked in the Psalms, and he didn’t even have a telescope. He couldn’t go to a planetarium and behold the vastness of the universe. He saws the greatness of the heavens with his naked eye and knew he was but a speck…a speck the Creator of the universe sees, hears, and protects. How amazing is that?

Walking out of a planetarium always makes my head spin…and not because I just woke up from a quick nap. It hurts to try to comprehend the vastness of God’s creation. You try to fathom it, but you can’t. You try to measure the distances by what you know, but you don’t know anything that grand. And you wonder that God even cares about a speck like you. But He does. And the universe is. And at the end of the day, all you can do is sit down, shake your head, and exclaim, “O God, how great Thou art!”

The Garden of Eden.

A sign in an empty display. They just couldn't resist...

The dinosaur I wanted to take home as a pet. Isn't he cute?

The suspension bridge in the gardens - way fun!

Happy Birthday, America!

"God shed His grace on thee."