Stealing Joy . . .

It’s coming up on a year since we moved back to Oklahoma. I have been reminiscing about the transition. The sequence of events in the first two days here would’ve caused me to think we had made a huge mistake if it hadn’t been for God’s crystal-clear call to us to move back. Time has a way of granting perspective and even humor to what was NOT funny at the time.

                  The moving company had given us a window of 48 hours for their arrival. I had no tolerance for a window and had politely called twice in the previous weeks to let them know my desire for them to come at the beginning of that window. The scheduler was always kind and said there are variables like weather, truck delays, blah-blah-blah, that are beyond their control, but that they would make a note of it. Maybe to spite me, the truck came at 2 pm at the end of the window. I was undone. We were closing in another state at 9 am the next morning. I sent out a plea for all of my girls’ friends to come help. My house was full of teenagers throwing our belongings into boxes when the moving guys came.  I even had kids wrapping up my china in newspaper. The professional movers had the nerve to say they couldn’t be responsible for what those kids had packed. I told him at this point, it was all hands-on deck. My family needed to leave the house, full of people packing, and get on the road. I had to cancel my professional cleaners and hand the task off to friends and family. They cleaned and vacuumed as the movers finished throughout the evening. I don’t know how they still like us.  

We started the drive with two sobbing teenagers in the backseat. No one walked for the first hour, and the crying tapered as the drive went on. We arrived at our friend’s house late and the girls and I crashed upstairs. As I was drifting off to sleep, I heard Matt speaking loudly downstairs and I strained my ears to hear what was going on. He had just been told by our brother-in-law that the movers 8 hours of work was up and they had hit the door.  The house had been emptied, except for our baby grand piano that was still sitting in the foyer. My brother-in-law rallied friends, deacons, and elders from the church and they loaded that  piano at 10:30 pm into the truck, without a lift. I can’t even. Truly, our people are the best people in the world. And I don’t know how we are not hated.

                  I fell asleep eventually despite the adrenaline shooting through my system. I felt trapped on a roller coaster that would not be letting me off anytime soon. Somewhere in the wee hours of the morning Matt and I begin crafting a plan to get what we needed for our closing in a few short hours. In spite of previously closing on houses a handful of times before, we didn’t get everything we needed to close. Mainly like a cashier’s check. We looked online for branches of our bank that are in Oklahoma and they all say “Temporarily closed.” We looked at branches in north TX, to no avail. It eventually came to sending a friend to our local bank in Tomball because no one would answer the phone. But we kept hitting roadblocks. It was starting to look like we would not close. We were sitting at the conference table at the only title company in the county and I felt like I was having a panic attack. This title company has both parties at the closing, which is particularly lovely to add to your stress and embarrassment of failing on the ONE JOB you had for a successful closing. I tried to ignore the clamor in the room, including the jokes being told by the seller that were not helping my anxiety one bit. I decide to just focus on my breathing, wishing I could slump in my chair and slide under the table. To add to the pressure, the title company was only open a half day because it was a holiday weekend. Options are limited. And then, a Marlow miracle happens. In a sequence of events that you would not believe if I told you, we close on our house and get the keys. We get in the truck, overwhelmed with relief, and drive to the house to wait on that blessed moving truck.

                  It arrives a few hours later, and new and old friends come to help us unload. At some point in the afternoon, my children began to bring me some of their childhood photos that they had found scattered across the empty lot next to our home. My photo boxes were just placed (thrown? Only the Lord knows . . . ) into the moving truck without being secured in a real box, and when the door rolled up, the photos got sucked out and flew west in the Oklahoma wind.

                  Marlow and Kip, our dogs, had been boarded for a few days so we picked them up. Let me pause to explain that when we got Marlow, the dog, from the Stephens County Shelter 14 years ago, we never dreamed we would be moving him back to the town that inspired his name. But at this point, he is 14 and we will not be changing it. Marlow (the dog) in his exuberance of being back with his us and back to his motherland, threw a hip out. He began crying and limping and it was obvious he needed care immediately. In the midst of collecting photos scattered across the neighborhood and contemplating the fact that we selected the worst moving company on the planet, we got to start having end-of-life conversations about Marlow (the dog). When a dog is that old, and there is a chance the medication isn’t going to “fix” him, you have to consider these things. So we had just yanked our kids from their childhood home and community, and now we have to talk about putting their dog to sleep. I can’t. Check please? I need a nap.

                  Speaking of nap, the next day, Chloe woke up from a nap and came to my closet where I was unpacking. “Mom, something is wrong with my face.” I turned around to see my kid’s face resembling a tomato . . . perfectly round and beat red. It was terrifying. I gasped, then tried to act like a registered nurse, which for some reason was hard to remember in that moment. I reached out to check her pulse, while assessing her breathing. I asked in the most casual way possible, “Are you breathing okay?”  I knew where the Benedryl was, and after 50 mg and 30 minutes, there was no relief. I then scrambled to find the oral steroids from Claire’s asthma era in the 15 boxes left to unpack. I cannot find it. I am now realizing I have missed my opportunity to go to Urgent Care, and we would possibly be visiting the local ER within 36 hours of arriving in our new town. I had one more lever to pull, and my second Marlow miracle occurred. Crisis averted. No ER visit needed. Relief came.

The next morning, I woke in the 5 o’clock hour, driven by the need to create peace and order in my heart and fake it by creating order in my home. I let the dogs out of their kennel and stepped out on our back porch. It was incredibly quiet. No buzz of traffic. No sirens in the distance. And no glow of lights of a city that never really slept. The sky was black and smooth as velvet. The stars were showing out . . . so brilliant, so glorious. I breathed in the chilly air and let the beauty and stillness wash over me. It was so stunning that it temporarily stopped my racing thoughts and paused the chaos of the previous days, and months. That moment caught me “stealing joy,” as author Henri Nouwen calls it . . . taking it from somewhere else when I can’t find it myself.

In the many months following, there have been many moments like that on the back porch. Seeing the glory of God’s unmistakable hand in the sky, and knowing that same God is orchestrating the details of my life with the same intention. It has been resetting and refreshing for me, and a gift that I enjoy most mornings in the quiet stillness of the morning.

                  I had naively thought leaving Houston and the MET would be the hardest part of the transition. It hadn’t occurred me to that establishing in this new community and living in Marlow would also be hard. Yes, we had lived here before and had some semblance of relationships and familiarity. But we were coming back to a community that continued to change and evolve in the previous decades, and we had changed and grown as well. There has been joy, sometimes flowing in abundance, and other times, we have had to “steal”it. God has invited us to cultivate it in the midst of disappointment, frustration, or homesickness. That joy sustains and anchors us when our emotions and circumstances jerk us all over the place, just like that proverbial roller coaster I felt strapped in during our first few days here.

                  I don’t have a moving company to recommend to you, but I do with great confidence declare that God’s faithfulness prevails and endures just His word says. Our family has seen that, even if we did come here in a tornado of ridiculousness. I guess that is why God had to confirm Matt’s call to move here 28 times over those previous months. It seemed excessive, but in hindsight, it was needed. And on the mornings that I can’t see those stars because they are hidden behind clouds or fog, I know they are there. Just like He is. And the roller coaster won’t last forever. Just hang on and steal some joy until you can see the stars, and see Him, again.