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| These are the faces of a family that just found out they have a placement in New Hampshire! A miracle! |
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| Packing again...so much LUV for our sweet family and friends here in FL! |
You're going to want to read this one from the Travel Nurse himself-
During a lull at work, I typed in our old address on Erin Court into Google/maps and peered into a frozen history. Our little home tucked at the end of a chip-sealed cul-du-sac, hidden by overgrown elm trees; two graffitied dumpsters standing sentinel at the entrance to the parking lot, waiting to ingurgitate themselves on the next piece of dead furniture. If you zoom in far enough you can see two pixelated, white, plastic lawn chairs problem solving over an apoplectic kiddie pool in the back yard; a wire fence still ajar from a foregone small figure in search of parking lot adventure, the ground missing grass that laughter trampled bare.
Such a strange happening that a photograph can fumigate the past. Judging by the still life of our house in what looks like the convection of July heat, we hadn't a care in the world and were probably down at the creek chucking rocks at ducks. Life always seems simpler in pictures. The pictures taken today will be simple in a year from now, though I wouldn't call my life simple now. The thing missing from pictures is the future and its the future that steals the simplicity from the now.
In that dormant picture off stage there is a man not wanting to go to work and wondering how he can pull his family out of debt and lead them spiritually and raise his kids to be anything but what seems like the inevitable sociopaths they are destined to become if he can only restrain his temper that bays like bloodhounds on a scent. And a woman with fingers chapped from changing diapers and suffering multiform toddler abuses, with a heart that beats to sing the world a new song but the blood shunting towards keeping kids from dying every moment of every day, choking herself out with Pinterest expectations of what motherhood really is.
Yet when I gold pan my memories, pleasantness and grace remain and the dregs and silt of the anxiety I carried like a passport sifted away. Because we are all right. And back then, we were going to be all right. God promised to preserve us, and He has preserved us. In this moment I am kneading and rolling the mass of things that I need to accomplish with the ending and beginning of contracts, the moving of my family, the emotional tectonic activity rumbling in our souls, and the myriad other duties I wish I could subcontract out. Even as I write this I can feel this acrid leaven rising in my soul. But when I Googlemaps this moment in my life in a year, I will know then what feeble faith struggles to see now: that come what may, it will be all right. And there is a host of saints with severed heads that say the same. The only functional difference between the tranquil past and tumult of the future is the promises of God waiting in the queue.
I'm thankful for the nascence of our family in that fair city. I don't know if we will play our game pieces back on that board. I don't know where we will hang our trellis and let life grow all over it. But for now we are on a ship with full sail, the tell-tale pulled stiff, a landless adventure off the bow.
We will have been in Orlando 8 months by the time we leave in two weeks, a near full term pregnancy. And if I may extort the analogy a bit farther, it didn't take long for us to implant our life into the fertile and wombish community here. We were able to spend both Christmas and Thanksgiving with Phil and Cathy, Amber's parents, which was such a rich and valuable time; mostly for Cathy, I think, who would love nothing more than to roll around in a bin of grandchildren, like a kid in a ball pit. We owe a great deal to them for the life changing trajectory this time has had on our lives, and we thank them for a little borrowed time. As to the other mischief that was done in Orlando, are they not written in the annals of the Book of Face? (Ha!, a 2 Chronicles joke)
Our next stop will be in Concord, NH and, as we have seen God's providence carving out a path for us so clearly, this is evidence to me of his preparation. As far as I could tell, this was the only job for an ER travel nurse in the state of NH. I wasn't qualified for it, nor did my start date jive with the facilities. I was initially rejected for the latter reason, but they reconsidered, I interviewed and the job was offered to me. I could take from this one of three things: 1) The hospital manager was so awestruck by my composure and articulate answers she immediately shredded the rest of her applications, fanned herself, and bequeathed the job to me 2) The other applicants were a scurvy lot of opiate addicts and misogynistic inbreds, against whom, my interview was passable. 3) The Lord worked some butterfly effect that mazed its way down, starting in the stratosphere, one consequence agitating another, like a raindrop on a window, to His intent. He blows me away. A God with Whom it takes no effort to know the location and future of every thought, molecule and electron position in the universe; and sovereignty over their outcomes. I will take # 3. Even if He used #3 to make #2 happen.
We miss you, all of our friends and family, and a special preemptive 'miss' to the friends and family we are about to leave.
