The Wheels on the Bus

No deep thoughts today; even though my mind has been flooded with thoughts over the last week.  Life has been such a mess during this transition that I haven't had time to just sit, think, and write.  As a guy who loves to take pictures and has a lot in front of me to photograph, I haven't even picked up my camera in a few weeks.  I turned it on just a couple of days ago to see what the last thing I shot was; I laughed and cried when I saw the picture of us pulling out of our driveway in the U-Haul truck.  So began our adventure.

Since arriving here, I've decided to become a public transporatation guy.  Never before had I ridden a bus
or a train; it just never fit into my schedule and location.  I hadn't a clue how to ride a bus and was afraid I'd be the freightened little boy huddled in the corner looking like such a country boy in the big city.

I spent hours online learning how to ride a bus and walked to the Metro Transit store to get maps and instructions.  Then I figured I just had to dive in and try it out.  I made it home alive, but not without a few hiccups.  I got onto my bus a bit too early (it wasn't in service yet), and the driver was a little annoyed that I interrupted his reading time to let me on the bus.  When we finally got moving, I caught a glimpse of a friend I hadn't seen in a long time waiting at one of the stops.  I really wanted to hop off the bus to say hi and catch up for a bit, but I was so nervous the driver wouldn't let me back on and I didn't have enough money to pay for another ride; so I stared at my friend through the window as the bus sat there and slowly pulled away.

But now I'm becoming a public transportation veteran.  I've ridden the light rail, the commuter train, and the bus (I'm still scared of taxis).  I got myself a transit card so I don't need to worry about having the right amount of cash on hand.  The entire trip from near my home to work is about 40 minutes long, so I get a lot of reading assignments done in my 80 minutes of bus riding.  I'm learning different parts of the city by taking a different route through town.

Best of all, I'm getting to know a lot of new people.  The bus travels through every part of town: middle and lower class residential neighborhoods, commercial and industrial districts, university campuses, near medical facilities, and right into the downtown professional areas.  I see every kind of person on the bus and have had great opportunities to hear stories of people who are nothing like me.  It is already softening my heart even more toward people.  Not only do I have a lot of time to read, but to think about and pray for the people God puts into my life for the 40 minutes every morning and afternoon.

Pray that God uses me to bless the souls of my fellow bus riders with the Good News of His Sovereign love.

Rain fell, Floods came, and Winds Blew and Beat on That House

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” (Matthew 7:24-27, ESV)

Well, here we are in the Twin Cities.  I started my new job in Minneapolis at the end of July in order to get the transition started sooner than later to avoid piling it all up at once.  We finally got an offer on our house so we decided after a couple weeks of being apart that we should move the family up as well on the first weekend of August.  This would give the family some time to establish a routine before school started.  It seemed like a good plan.

Did I say I had a good plan?  Those never seem to work out.

We planned to do all of our moving in one day.  Molly had spent a couple of weeks packing and labeling the boxes to make it easier for our moving help to get our things where they belonged.  We ordered a large U-Haul truck and had a big group of people ready to help us fill it up.  After catching our breaths, we planned to drive and hour and a half to the Cities and meet another crew awaiting us to help unload.  We certainly wouldn't get settled into the home in one day, but we hoped to have all the boxes where they belonged and get the furniture set up by evening.  It was such a good plan.

Just to be sure, I contacted our landlord to make sure everything would be ready for us.  We were told it would be ready except for a bathroom remodel being done.  "We can handle that" we thought.  We wanted to be together and we could put up with some bathroom work since we were going to end up with a nicer bathroom.

So we set about our way to have our plans more than slightly modified.

Molly had a dream the night before our move that during the move we were going to lose all of our things.  She was a bit worried that something bad was going to happen, but I assured her that we'd done a lot to prepare for this and everything would work out just fine.  I told her that I had a dream that we moved in and the place was completely remodeled and was the most gorgeous place we'd ever lived in (I didn't really expect that.  It was just to say how silly dreams can be).

The day started off with the U-Haul guy telling us they didn't have the size of truck we ordered so they would upgrade us for free to the largest truck he had; six feet longer than what I calculated was necessary.  "Oh well" I thought.  "We'll just have some extra space."

It turns out that God was taking care of us in my ignorance, because that truck was extremely efficiently organized and we still didn't have enough room for all of our things.  It was a bit embarassing how much stuff we had accumulated in only 6 years in that house.  But we were appreciative to all the help we had for their hard work.  We were still right on time and ready to head up to our new home.

The drive went well; nothing was damaged on the trip so I knew Molly's dream was wrong.  We pulled up to our new home, called our move-in help and took a deep breath to prepare for just a couple more hours of hard work before getting some good rest.

And "the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that [family]."

Walking up to the front door, my heart sank, my eyes welled up in tears, and I feared for my family.  The front yard was full of furniture from the previous tenants.  The entire house was under construction and didn't look like it would be ready for many days.  There was construction equipment in every single room; tools, materials, waste, and a crew for multiple projects; not just a bathroom.  Every sort of uncleanness decorated the house from the previous tenants' failure to learn the use of a vacuum or a wash cloth; dirt all over the floors, mouse droppings in every corner, stains all over the carpets, moldy food filling the refrigerator and cabinets, and a couple years of grease covering the kitchen counters, floors, and stove.  Because of the mess, there seemed to be quite the attraction for small rodents to the home.

I had walked in before Molly and the kids could make it up to the door.  My mind swirled with all of the assurances I made to her that it would be alright and the doubts we'd had about leaving our comfortable small-town home behind to move to the big city and live on very little.  I felt like I was punched in the gut and laughed at for being such a failure of a provider for my family.

We briefly looked around the house and determined that it would be impossible for the family to move in for a while.  And then I looked at our moving truck out front staring me in the face as I wondered what to do with everything we owned.  I quickly determined to get the family out of there, so I sent my wife and the kids away to her sister's house until I could straighten it all out; not having a clue how many days that might take.

If we hadn't already made a committment to some other friends we would have backed out of this living arrangement and found a new place to live.  I talked to the landlord who didn't seem to understand why I was so upset.  He told his maintenance folks to remodel the bathroom and get the house clean for our arrival.  He put me in contact with the project manager to work something out temporarily.

The move-in crew arrived as I sat on the front steps in complete shock.  Not knowing what to do.  Should I stay in a hotel room?  Put the truck in storage for a week?  I couldn't afford that.  Plus, we needed things that were in the truck.  It's hard to take care of three small children without their clothes, diapers, beds, soaps, etc.

I decided to head into the house and clear some space in a few of the rooms that had the least amount of work to be done.  We would ignore the work Molly did organizing and labeling every box and shove everything into these few rooms.  We'll let the crew finish their work and be back next weekend to try moving in again.  So for the next three hours, my newest best friends and I hauled in and stacked everything we owned into the mess; spending every moment at the edge of sobbing uncontrollably.

As we unloaded the truck into the front yard and into the house, people would walk by or drive up eyeballing our items and asking if they could take them.  I couldn't understand why so many people were circling our things like vultures.  My heart sank as I feared that I moved us into a neighborhood where people would be waiting for the opportunity to take whatever we took our eyes off of.  Molly's dream was coming true; we really were going to lose everything.

We finally finished unloading the truck.  I was so tired (as I planned to be at the end of the day), but there would be no rest as I had hoped.  I contacted the crew manager and pleaded with him to leave my things alone and actually protect them for my family.  "Please lock every door and close every shade to keep those vultures away from everything I own."  

His response sent me into despair, "We don't have a key.  We've just been leaving the back door unlocked to get in every day to work."

I left the house and all that I owned in that house pleading with him to figure out a way to lock the door.  My friends offered to take me in for the night.  We took the truck back to the store, I climbed into his care, and sobbed.  On the drive to somewhere restful, my new friends sat in silence for a while and then offered to take this 30 minute drive to pray for peace in the midst of chaos, for wisdom to know what to do next, for faith to trust that God will use this for good, and to avoid bitterness resulting from seeming injustice.

This was not  how it was supposed to go.  Why am I moving my family here?  What am I putting them through?  What is God's purpose in all of this?

These questions will take a while to get answered.

I managed to get to my family and stay with my sister-in-law for the week.  We talked to our landlord who was very apologetic about the entire thing.  There was some serious miscommunication which resulted in the entire event.  He offered to do everything possible to remedy the situation and to even go beyond that to make our new home a much better place to stay for the next few years.

For some reason, God decided to let Satan pour out some tribulation on our family that day.  Two weeks later, we still do not have the house to where we had hoped it would be that Saturday evening.  There is a lot of work to be done to get our things organized and set up.  But we are moving in and making it our home.

We were so blessed to make some good friends through that trial; people we will continue to see regularly who were an incredible encouragement.  One of them encouraged me saying, "Satan knows the good that is going to come from the people who live in this house and will try to prevent it from happening."  It encouraged me to be reminded that God is going to use us to do some special things.  You know you are doing some great work of God when you run into opposition once in a while.

Another new friend told me, "God must really love you guys, because He seems to give the hardest tests to those He loves most."  When God has big responsibilities planned for someone, He tends to put them through a lot to rid them of their idols and focus their hearts more on Him.

When we get through this season, I look forward to the joys He has in store for my family; the good work that He has prepared for us to do.