Another year

It's almost the end of the year. Seems like 2009 just came in and it's time to usher it out while 2010 enters the scene. Some years, I've not even given the passing year a glance as it ended with not so much a bang. Other times, I'd enjoyed the year so much that I was sad to see it go.
Change is always an anxiety producing time for me. I long for it, while at the same time I am afraid of it. I've moved a LOT in my life, and childhood fears and memories add a lot to my anxiety. As an adult, I've found myself moving by choice an awful lot as well. While part of me longs for a place to call home, another part always thinks of what might be somewhere else. A new job, a new church, a new neighborhood and house. It thrills me to think of it.
As we sit here in New Orleans trying to figure out what our next step is, I find it exciting to think of moving one more time. I had told Paul when we moved to Mississippi that he had better plan to die there. I added in that if he ever mentioned moving after that move, he had better plan to die a little sooner than originally expected. But then God came calling and we moved to seminary.
We've looked at Boone, NC and a job with Samaritan's Purse. There is a job in Georgia with Habitat for Humanity. There is a newspaper job in Dallas. So many things to think about....
and then I drive the boys to school every morning in uptown New Orleans and go to their conferences and hear how spectacularly they are doing, all the friends they've made, and how much they are learning....and a part of me yearns to stay right here in the Crescent City. And don't get me started on the Touro. I love it there, even though things have been difficult for me in some ways. The people are one of a kind. I love them, I love the culture, I love the fact that when I'm in a predominantly white group of people I feel out of place. LOL. That absolutely cracks me up, but it's true. I went to the Wal Mart in Slidell one day and kept feeling like something was "off". Then it occurred to me that the majority of shoppers that day were white.
We don't fit in at the seminary any more, that is for certain. I get aggravated when students who don't work outside the gates or go to church with anyone other than other seminary students think that they can make a difference in a city they know nothing about. I actually witnessed a student telling a local woman that Katrina was a long time ago and it was time to move on. I have never been so embarrassed. What made it worse was that he identified himself as a Christian and as a NOBTS student. This woman knew that I was a Christian and that I lived at NOBTS. It horrified me. For over a year I had built a relationship with this woman and in one fell idiotic swoop, I lost credibility because of one person that didn't know anything about what he was talking about. I wish the seminary would require all the students to take a class on tactuful communication. Is there such a thing?
I've taken more than my share of deriding comments about my return to work and placing the boys in school instead of homeschooling them. And Paul has got to be the most underpaid, undervalued writer ever to grace the campus of NOBTS. We've really gone through the ringer while we've been here. Sometimes I think of things that have happened here and get angry and upset and wonder why we stayed...but I know why we did. God didn't give us the okay to move on. And so we've bit our tongues, sat on our hands, and gone on.
I feel like change is coming. As the Gaither song says, "I just feel like something good is about to happen..."
I sure hope so....stay tuned!