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Kristen Anne Glover

Five in Tow

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The Truck Didn’t Come

Home is where the Army Sends You

We woke up early because it was the day a semi-truck promised to pull down our street, big and bright and beautiful to two boys who still had a week of being four left in their bodies.  Semi-trucks are always worth getting up early for, especially if they intend to park right in front of your house, close enough to touch.

The kids scrambled out of bed and stood in the empty living room, noses to glass, waiting.

But the truck didn’t come.

They pulled themselves away from the windows long enough to devour cold cereal from four borrowed bowls and a mug.  Then they raced upstairs to put on shorts and t-shirts so they could stand under the hot sun and bake a little on the sidewalk while they waited.  Any second now, it would be here.

But the truck didn’t come.

Jeff packed up the folding table and chairs we’d checked out from the military lending closet at Ft. Bliss and filled the minivan full to bursting with the foam mattresses we had been sleeping on all week.  The kids followed him to the garage, begging to be allowed to use them to slide on down the stairs just once before he took them back.

Foam mattresses

“Don’t you have a truck to watch for?” he said as he stumbled out the door.  They watched him go and listened for the rumble of eighteen wheels barreling down our street.

But the truck didn’t come. 

Lunch came and went and so did every entertaining activity we could think of to do in an empty house.  A few discarded Matchbox cars spun idly to a stop on the bare floor, wheels to the sky, mimicking the dead June bugs the boys were collecting in the garage.  I bought a necklace I didn’t need online and Jonathan burned pricker bushes with his magnifying glass.  Faith read the same book for the fifth time.

But the truck didn’t come. 

Long into the afternoon we waited, watching the shadows of the neighbors’ houses stretch out across our lawn like lazy cats.

Suddenly, the shrill call of the phone broke the silence.

“How is the move going?” asked the chipper voice of our moving coordinator.  She reeked of happiness, the exclusive kind of happiness that comes from sleeping in one’s own bed the night before.

“Um…they’re not here yet,” came my reply.

“What?”

“They haven’t arrived.  Our stuff hasn’t arrived.”  I let my mind wander to a thought of my beautiful bed, and sighed.

“Oh.  JustasecwhileIchecksomething.”   She rushed to hang up the phone and left me listening to the hum of the dead receiver.

The truck was not going to come.

I knew it even before the moving-coordinator-who-got-to-sleep-in-a-real-bed called me back and told me so.  I knew it, but I could hardly believe it.  It seemed a cruel trick to play on a woman who had been sleeping on 2 inches of foam for days when she wasn’t even camping.

I wanted to cry.  How could I get settled without our stuff? 

I thought back.  Three weeks before, that truck had pulled away from our house, loaded down with all the things we call ours.  Everything we owned was neatly packed in cardboard and bubble wrapped and inventoried so we’d half-know what to do with it when it arrived on the other end of a seventeen hundred mile journey to our new home.

The truck didn't come

Which one of you has my stuff?

I had stood by a window and watched as the crew slowly drained my house of all its possessions.   I thought of my new house, which was two-dimensional in my mind, flat like a photograph of a place I had seen but never really been.  It was hard to imagine what it would actually be like, and harder to imagine how I would make it feel like I belonged there.

“How do you make a place feel like home?” a friend had asked, but I fumbled at the answer.

“I’m not really sure,” I said.

“Some people like to hang up curtains right away,” she offered, but we looked at my windows, still curtainless after five years in the house, and we both knew that wasn’t my thing.

“I guess I’ll just get unpacked as quickly as I can,” I told her.  “I think once all of our stuff arrives and I get unpacked, it will feel like home.”

But the truck hadn’t come.

And all of the things I had counted on to make a house a home where stuck somewhere between Washington and Texas.

Except six. 

That night, those six people sat around a rickety card table in an empty house and shared a beautiful meal made by a new friend in honor of what we thought would be our moving-in day.   It was a meal the kids declared the best thing they’d ever eaten because my ability to microwave soup and Minute Rice were no match for Mrs. Harvey’s baked spaghetti and homemade bread.

We wrestled the black foam mattresses back up the steps after driving back to the military installation to re-borrow them,  and arranged all five kids in the largest room.  Sleeping on foam mattresses in a great big room is loads of fun when you are not yet old enough to know that sometimes, you wake up and your back hurts.  Giggles erupted down the hallway as Faith recounted our made-up leprechaun stories and Micah declared Paul the winner of his stinky foot contest.

Epic Sleepover

It occurred to me, as I arranged my bones over my borrowed bed, that home is not about the stuff.

It’s about the story.  And all the time I had been waiting for our stuff, the story was already being written.

God has opened up a fresh new page and started writing the words He loves to write:  “In the beginning…”

 It is beautiful to be in the beginning with God, to be nestled into the pages of the story He’s writing for us and to know that we are wanted right where we are.  Any other place on this earth would never feel like home now, whether all of our boxes arrived or not, because God is not writing the story anywhere else.  He is writing it here.

(With the exception of my bed), none of the stuff really matters.  We are here.  We are safe.  We are together.  And we have one grand adventure unfolding right before our eyes.

Home is where the story is written. It is the place where God molds the characters and reveals the plot.  It is where His story becomes our history.

This story, so full of the thoughts and intentions of God, will be told around angel fires long after the stuff has crumbled into dust.

The truck didn’t come.  But the story is off to a great start. 

The Truck Came

Finally!

 

 

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Moving to Ft. Bliss

Ft. Bliss, Texas

Who’s up for a road trip?

We got the news on Saturday.  For over three weeks, we have been waiting to hear where Jeff’s first duty assignment as an active duty chaplain will be.  It was a good sort of waiting, like waiting for Christmas, because every place was exciting and new.

But still, three weeks is a long time to wait to see what is under the tree.

The kids and I looked at maps of all the Army installations around the world and dreamed about the possibilities.  We could be moved right down the road to Ft. Lewis, which would make it easier to say good-bye to Nana and Papa, or we could be sent across the ocean to new adventures in Japan or Germany.

“I just hope it’s not Texas,” Jeff would say when the topic came up.  He had been stationed in San Antonio in his Air Force days, back when he was young and single and almost as incredibly handsome as he is now.   If I had known him then, I would have snatched him right up.

But I wasn’t there because I didn’t know him then.

Because of that, and a few other reasons, San Antonio was miserable.  San Antonio was the reason he got out after three years instead of four.  San Antonio was the reason Texas did not make the list when Jeff’s recruiter asked him where he’d like to be stationed.

So when I got home on Saturday from a day out with Faith and Jeff met us in the driveway with a big grin and the news, “Well, I heard where we’re going!”  I did not expect him to say El Paso, Texas.

El Paso, Texas? 

I choked on a laugh and repeated the words because I thought he was joking.

“Are you serious?  Texas?”

“I would not make that up,” he said.  “We’re headed to Ft. Bliss in El Paso, Texas.”

“Ft. Bliss?”  The name made me explode, it seemed so funny to me.  Ft. Bliss.  God has a sense of humor.

Jeff was smiling too so I grabbed him around the neck and kissed him because it was so wonderful to know.  Texas!  Suddenly it didn’t matter that San Antonio was not his favorite place on earth.  This was not San Antonio. This was Ft. Bliss!

Joy rushed in with the knowing, and we both felt the thrill of knowing where the next two years were going to find us.

“We’re going to Texas!  We’re going to Texas!” the kids whooped and hollered in the driveway.

All except for Kya, who burst into tears and ran into the house.

But we could not stop laughing.  God was not going to let us off the hook with this whole faith thing, not now, not ever. 

“Where is El Paso?”  Jonathan said, wrinkling up his nose like the word tasted funny in his mouth.

“Let’s find out!” I said, and we all ran for the classroom atlas that we keep stowed away in the school cupboard.  We flipped open the pages to the state that will be our new home in just a few weeks, and found El Paso.  There it was, right in the foothills, within spitting distance of Mexico, with miles and miles of desert all around.

I looked out at my lush green yard and the beautiful view of the ocean and the snowy mountains and I laughed again.  I was going to need to buy more sunscreen.

But what an adventure!

“We’re going to learn Spanish,” I told the kids, “and go to Mexico!  Just wait until you see it!”

It’s been nearly twenty years since I lived in Mexico, but it has not been so long that I have forgotten what it was like to walk through the shanty towns, what it was like to drive by the street kids, dressed in rags and high on paint thinner.  It has not been so long that I have forgotten the warmth of the people and the richness of the culture.  It has not been so long that I have forgotten how much I loved it.

I was going to get to take my kids to Mexico! 

The kids were thrilled about the Mexico part.  Not so much the Spanish.  Spanish sounds a little bit like school, and that was an unfortunate reminder that schoolbooks are packable.

“What’s it like in El Paso?” Faith asked.

“Well, there are lots of rocks, and swimming pools, tons of tarantulas and scorpions…”  I paused for a second and wondered if it was a good idea to embellish the amount of venomous creatures in and around El Paso.  I wasn’t exactly sure there were tons of them, and I could just imagine God giving me a house infested with them just because I promised it to the kids.

So, that would be great.

“Will I be able to catch lizards?”  Jonathan asked.   He was practically foaming at the mouth.   Arachnids the size of dinner plates and scaly things that bite are his favorite.

“Probably.”

“What kind?”

Jeeze.  “Well…”

“Does everyone have a swimming pool?” Kya asked, saving me from having to recall anything beyond an armadillo, which isn’t even a lizard, but I couldn’t think of iguana for the life of me and I suddenly felt insecure about whether or not Gila monsters lived in Texas.  I should have paid more attention when Planet Earth was on.

“Will we have a pool?” Kya pressed her hand on my arm, tears still glittering in her eyes, and looked at me intently.  This could be the deciding factor on whether or not she moved to Texas with us or packed up her princess paraphernalia and moved in with Nana for the next two years.

“Oh, Kya, of course…”

Jeff looked at me and shook his head.  The thought of pool maintenance weighed heavier on his heart than her puppy eyes.  The man is made of steel.

“…of course…I don’t know yet,” I said slowly.  “We’ll see.”

Jeff looked at me again, only this time his face was very clearly communicating something like, “There is no way on earth we are getting a house with a pool,” but he said, “I saw a picture of the one on post, and it looks pretty great.  It has a water slide and everything.”

Nice save.

Her eyes grew wide.

“Awesome!”  Jonathan yelled.  

The living room erupted into shouts and cheers and various forms of interpretive dance.  Kya threw her arms around me.  This is going to be okay.

And of course, it really is going to be okay.  I looked at my children and I thought about all the places Jeff and I have lived, both before we were married and after.  Our lives have taken us all over the world, and while we both have lived in places we did not love, we have yet to find a place on this earth where God’s mercies do not reach.  All of those experiences have shaped us into the people we are today.

I can’t wait for my kids to have some of those adventures.

So.  We are going to El Paso, and it’s going to be great!

 

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I believe you can find grace for the mother you are and help to become the mother you long to be—a mom who has the freedom to choose the better things and enjoy her kids right now.

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