Three years ago today, we were piled on a bed at the Home 2 Suites in Mount Juliet – last stop on our journey here. I was so sick I could barely walk from the hotel to the car without pausing for a breath. Eric was exhausted, but yet not cranky (what a gem). Morky was still alive. The five of us – Mork, Auggie, Mu, Eric and me – had been driving for the better part of a week straight.
We were driving into a great unknown. In this small TN town, an empty house we had never seen was waiting for us – and not even a bed to sleep on. Walmart was our friend – we bought a blow up bed, some toilet paper, and made due.
This empty house was officially ours. We had signed the papers in Oregon and closed the transaction on our way out of town by FEDEXing a packet to TN from the snowy, icy road. Seven other people put offers on the house, and we had to pay more than we anticipated. We had come away from the West with a good bit more than we paid for the house there – thank God – but it quickly evaporated as we made needed repairs to this house here in TN. In the end, it was a financial loss.
We were not house-rich Californians (or Oregonians) dragging our politics here. We were not carpetbaggers looking for the next-hippest-place. We didn’t come to change this small town into something ‘better’ by adding yoga studios and coffee trucks.
We were just looking for home. And we gave up everything.
We were alone. Completely. No family, no friends here. Fact is, by the time we left the West, so many of them were lost to us anyway. The Obama years started the schisms, the Trump years deepened them, and the Vax years revealed a side of our beloveds that scared us and put a permanent distance between us that I don’t think can ever be mended. And we experienced the most tragic death of a loved one that can be imagined.
We had no-one.
I was so terribly sick. To this day we are still not 100% sure what happened to me. I just seemed to be slowly – then quickly – dying. Eric drove to the hospital 90 minutes away and back every single day. He had to take care of the pets who were left on their own while he sat by my bedside, advocated for my care, taught me how to breathe correctly by teaching me how to sing the Tennessee Waltz. I would sip piped-in oxygen in my hospital bed and sing loudly into the night after he had left, knowing-believing-hoping that one day I would be able to stand and sing.
I thank the Lord EVERY DAY that I am in Tennessee. In this place saturated with Christ’s followers, powerful prayers came out of nowhere and everywhere. My Lord Jesus came out of nowhere and everywhere. I was saved in every sense of the word.
And yet, I am still in a perishable body. Things are going to happen. But I know that He has me in his huge hands. I know because I have seen them and felt them.
Giving up everything was worth it. So worth it.
And so I shortcut back to today. We built, starting from zero, together. I am rebuilding my health. Eric is finding hobbies and joy in life again. We garden together as a testimony to the protections He has afforded us. He has given us special people that we would have never expected and deepened some of our other relationships. Our lives have opened up in ways we could not have imagined.
Each workout is a praise to Him. Each chore is my worship.
His gifts to us go on and on.