34. A Time of Transition

© 2020 Christ Revealed Bible Institute

February 2000 – July 2001

It has been several weeks since I wrote the last chapter. I’m not quite sure why I feel reluctant to “leap back into the fray.” Part of it might be that the next six years feel rather bleak. It’s not that I was being sidetracked; I was simply trying to support my family. Nonetheless, the path the Lord led me upon seemed to end, by June of 2006, in a bleaker and more hopeless place than before. 

I could call these ‘the wasted years,” if I did not believe in Jesus. It seems, in the present moment, a bit harder to me to place the Lord Jesus upon every experience of these years and to receive with joy each person with whom I interacted.

Yet my measurement is the Lord Jesus Christ, and He does all things well. As I walked through our house just a moment ago, where we have lived for eighteen years, now, the longest time in one place in our lives, I felt such gratefulness, that this place has indeed been our home.

Our Life at Applegate Trailer Park
First, here is a picture of our trailer at Applegate as it is now. I did add that second trailer to our lot, making it my “shop.” The trailer on the top side of the picture was not there; we were more isolated. And yes, that is the most treed trailer lot in Lubbock. It looks better approaching from the road, however, rather than Google’s top-down view.



It was our home and a good place for the children. The children were in two small bedrooms on the left and Maureen and I were all the way to the other end. The living room was fairly large, so I had a space for my computer desk in the back corner of it.

Our children were and are very creative. We enjoyed good children’s movies together, but they did not watch “television.” Rather, their creative energies went into making forts inside and out, and all kinds of artistic expressions, especially dressing up in different types of costumes. When I look at the pictures of our family life in the trailer, I see lots of creative happiness. At the same time, I continued to read books aloud to the children and Maureen regularly.

Because there were few other trailers in the back corner of the park, we felt fairly safe. Only once was something stolen, Johanna’s bike parked behind the trailer. Nonetheless, we were careful about their safety and trusted God in keeping us.

During this time, we continued in attendance at Trinity Church and fellowshipped with a number of people whom we met there as well as people we had known from the move. In June, we joined a weekly home group that was part of Trinity led by Erwin and Lisa Hyatt. We had wonderful times fellowshipping with those gathered in their home. Then, we connected with an older couple who had been in the move and had once lived at the Lubbock farm, Gaye and Ronnie Herrin. They were no longer in that fellowship, but still walked in the life and knowledge of God they had known in the move. We would often visit with them in their home, and because they continued in connections with people from the move, including Barbara James, we had further relationship with move people through Gaye and Ronnie. This was a good transition mix for us.

Besides continuing with substituting for Lubbock ISD, I also connected with a family from Trinity, named Owens, who needed cabinet work done in their home. In March, I built and installed a new vanity for their bathroom.  By June, I turned my blue van into a “shop.” I installed a power box and a heavy line to plug it in. I had a work counter and just enough room to use a small table saw. I did work on the ground outside, of course, but had a dry and lockable place for tools and materials. I then did another set of bathroom vanities for the Owen’s. 

During the spring months, I found that I could apply for a larger amount of money in the student loans. We did that and used the extra money partly to work on our trailer and for our health. We continued to use Young Living Essential oils, and I was able to do their complete cleanse. After a few weeks, I had begun to feel much better and was able to work better for the next several years. 

Franklin Graham held a crusade in Lubbock in April of 2000, which Maureen attended with Kyle and Johanna. Through the service, Kyle kept telling his mother that he wanted to go home. Then, when the call was given, towards the end of that time, Kyle suddenly stood to go down to the front. Soon, Kyle was the only one of few remaining, a little eight-year-old boy alone. At that point, Johanna wanted to go down to join him, which she did; she was six. Both of them gave their hearts to the Lord in that service.

Doors that Close 
Trinity Church also had a full school. The primary grades were at the main church building, while the high school was in a large building several blocks away.  Trinity Church had purchased a large empty shopping center and converted it into their high school and annex for church socials, etc. During these months, the church itself was flooded and needed extensive repairs. For that reason, Trinity had their regular services in the annex of the other building, in a very large room. This continued environment of spiritual wholesomeness and life was slowly thawing me out inside. 

Because I was substitute teaching, I also applied to substitute for Trinity Christian High School, and did fill in there a number of times. I applied to teach fulltime as well. At the same time, Trinity Church offered a pastoral mentoring program for which I applied. I wanted to learn a fresh way of being a “leader” of God’s people.

I never heard back from either one of those applications. As I look at this transition time, the four years between Blair Valley and Houston, I see that it was a series of finding several closed doors, and then, presto, the one that opened. This pattern would occur several times. By summer, however, it became clear why Trinity Church itself was not God’s path for us.

The Summer Trimester
The summer trimester at LCU was a high point for me in the graduate program. Because teachers were not in school, the courses were held during the day. The four courses I took were Learning and Human Development, Instructional Leadership, Principles of Supervision, and Content Area Literacy. Much of our time was at the educational services center and included various courses by which we were certified as instructional leaders in Texas public education. I enjoyed being a colleague of equal standing with professional educators.

Content Area Literacy was taught by Dr. Hannel in our building on campus. This was an important class for me from which I gained much, the teaching of reading while teaching other subjects. I knew how to teach writing because I had slowly learned to write. But I could not grasp teaching reading because I never really learned to read. They told me what the letters were in the first months of school, and I have not stopped reading since. A more recent job, however, taught me the fundamentals of teaching reading.

A major paper I did for Dr. Hannel was titled “Writing Across the Curriculum,” about teaching writing inside the different school subjects. In move community, I enjoyed teaching all the subjects in the humanities. But at this point, teaching students to write well was becoming my focus and interest.

CityView Fellowship 
Pastor Gary Kirksey was an anointed pastor who sought the Lord inside arenas of the charismatic movement closest to the Feast of Tabernacles. A subsection of the charismatic movement, including John Osteen, had been influenced by George Warnock’s little book, Feast of Tabernacles. They did not take what they learned into sectarianism as Sam Fife did, but still there was much knowledge of the life of God revealed in His church that was known by many, including Pastor Kirksey. Part of Pastor Kirksey’s interest was to connect himself and the church with a “covering” of leading charismatic ministries. Otherwise, Trinity Church was just on its own, so to speak. Pastor Kirksey had no interest in any formal or legal arrangement, rather a spiritual covering of life and of interacting with other mature ministries. This interest of Pastor Kirksey was not shared by many of the elders of Trinity Church. 

We found the services held over at the annex to be wondrously anointed of the Lord. Then, one Sunday morning, it happened. The service began as it always did, but somewhere halfway through, the Spirit of the Lord began to lead us in a different direction than what the bulletin said, and Pastor Kirksey followed the Spirit. This was the last straw, and the church elders gave him the option of resigning or being fired. He chose to resign so that he could say goodbye to the congregation the next Sunday.

A few hundred people in the congregation, however, wanted to remain with Pastor Gary and his wife, Marsha. They rented rooms in the Sysco building (the owner was part of the fellowship) and the next Sunday four hundred people gathered there (out of Trinity’s congregation of around 1200). CityView Christian Fellowship was launched. Maureen and I did not attend that first service, but we went for the second service, which was at the Lubbock Civic Center because the gathering was too large for the other place. CityView was now our home church. 

A young ministry couple who had been pastors at Trinity, David and Colleen Eppler, also came with Pastor Kirksey to be part of the new pastoral staff. Colleen had been the praise leader at Trinity, one of the most wondrous praise leaders, of an equal with Lori Pettis or others I had known in the move. Sadly, she did not continue long as the praise leader at CityView, but became the oversight of the children’s ministry. Maureen and I took our turns (because we had kids) teaching Sunday School under her direction.

I want to share an experience I had one Sunday morning at the CityView fellowship sometime in the fall of 2000. The services at CityView were very vibrant and life-giving. We even began to dance in the Spirit. Some would slowly dance through the aisles with bright-colored cloth banners as we worshipped. A few times (probably in the next year), Johanna was invited to dance her graceful ballet moves in the front, near the praise leader. She was so beautiful and anointed of God.

This was a good fellowship of people who loved Jesus and who drew us into life. In fact, Pastor Gary soon instituted a meal together once a week before the Wednesday service, thus moving us in the direction of Tabernacles. 

Then, in a service, Pastor Gary called many to come down to the front in a time of repentance and dedication to God. In spite of all the goodness of God, I had continued in distress deep inside, still frozen emotionally and locked into too much hurt. I went forward and lifted my hands up to God. I prayed in my own heart, “Father, I repent of ever having listened to Buddy Cobb.” Something lifted from me in that moment and for the first time, I could say, “God loves me.” Do you see that period after “me.”? Up until that moment such a statement was “blasphemy” in my mind. God loves me, BUT – I MUST, is how I had thought it should be. 

It might be strange to you that, in spite of my knowledge of the revelation of Christ, I could not know “God loves me.” At that time in my life, being able to sink into such a knowing still seemed radical. It would be another year before healing could actually start, but God could now begin to soften my heart against all the pain. 

Fall Courses & Student Teaching
That fall, we enrolled Kyle into the Trinity School for his fourth-grade year. He was now nine years old. Maureen continued to home school Johanna and Katrina. We had enrolled Johanna earlier in a ballet program (Katrina was too young, she would take ballet later in Houston). Johanna really enjoyed this and was so very graceful in her dancing.

In the fall semester, my primary task was student teaching. I took two courses as well, Administering Special Populations and Ethics. I will talk about Ethics first. The Ethics course was strange, mostly because they didn’t really know the Lord. I am looking at what I wrote for the course exam. Here is a bit.

“You suggested in class that we contemplate what would be our position if we discovered there was no God. Would we stay moral? I found such a request incredible. For all of my adult life I have sought to walk with God. I have heard His voice; I have received His rebuke. I have seen His power and His glory. I have seen His sovereign hand in my life and in the lives of others in incredible ways, I have experienced physical miracles, I have seen Him deliver people from powerful oppression. Every day, I consider His claim on my life, every day I cry out to Him to direct and help me. I am sorry, Dr. Patty, I don’t want to boast in myself, but to consider that God may not exist is beyond me. If God ceases, we cease. … Where God is present, there is true goodness, where He is absent goodness is not. Doing good deeds apart from the presence of God is sin that will result in death. …Love is God. Love is not a gift from God, but it is the presence of God Himself.”

I did not yet know our precious union with Christ, but as I read through the rest of the essay, I find much that I teach now the same.

I applied to student teach at O.L. Slaton Middle School that fall of 2000 and was assigned to Greg Reeves who taught advanced English to the brightest junior high students. This was my first venture into the public-school arena as a teacher. Greg Reeves was a great choice for me, partly because he specialized in teaching writing. 

The initial core of my writing program that I developed over the years came from Greg Reeves' approach in his classroom. I have changed and adapted it, yes, but I give full credit to him for some of the initial ideas. He also taught the students archetypes, which was the first I had heard of such a thing. My enjoyment of bringing the archetypes of story into the classroom and into the present word of Christ began here as well. 

I love teaching. And I love kids. Much of the time in student teaching, I watched Greg Reeves teach and assisted him as needed. As part of my “training,” I also taught the full lessons several times. This was my first experience with teaching non-Christian young people. I found that my love for them was equal to my love for the young people in move community schools. 

I remember attending a school assembly with our students gathered with the rest. In fact, a number of our students stood on the platform as part of the presentation. They were “wild and worldly.” Yet all I knew in that moment was just how much God and I loved them. I was free to see them through Christ, with no tentacles of seeing through accusation.

My last day of student teaching was November 3. When I announced that my time with these young people was finished, I received a surprising and gratifying response. I seem to have won a place in their hearts.

Graduation and Winter Trimester 
Once I had successfully completed the student teaching “course,” I was eligible to take the Texas Test for Teacher Certification and the test for teaching English. I did that, and thus became a certified Texas public school teacher. I immediately began applying to teach in several different Lubbock area schools.

At the same time, I had completed all the courses for the master’s degree in Secondary Education. I finished the degree requirements with a significant written exam covering all the courses that were part of the degree. I then prepared for a formal graduation in December with my colleagues. 

I did not have a teaching job yet, and so I continued with student loans and with enrollment in courses that would also allow me to obtain Texas Principal Certification. In the winter trimester, I took two courses, The Principalship, with Dr. Hannel, and an advanced writing course designed for school administrators.
 
Meanwhile, mom was coming for an extended visit in order to attend my graduation. Our trailer was decent and livable, but it could use improvement. So, I began some extensive remodeling. Eventually, I re-sheeted all the floors with plywood and new flooring. I started with the children’s bedrooms and re-did their bathroom vanity as well. Mom would have the girl’s bedroom while she was with us.

During this time, I purchased a small trailer from the trailer park owner. I sheeted it with a new plywood floor to make it my wood shop and put a storage room in the back. I moved it over to our site with the blue van and parked it perpendicular to our trailer on the western side. This made our yard feel more protected. I built a porch in front of it at the same height as the floor inside the blue van. That way I could back the van up against the porch and it was all one even floor. Now, I had a “three-room” shop. Things were tight, but it was a good space. 

At the same time, I was thinking in terms of trying to make a living doing my own construction projects. I was not hearing back from any of my applications to teach. Of course, it was mid-year, and most districts hire in the early summer. So, I obtained credit with Home Depot and purchased a number of stationary woodworking tools. Besides a table saw, I obtained a chop saw, a drill press and a bench sander. I set all these up in my new shop. 

I felt a little hesitancy inside about purchasing all these things, but I ignored it and pushed ahead. I needed to support my family, and I had to find a way to do that.

Mom came for a couple of weeks. Our graduation was held at the LCU auditorium. This was one of the most controlled such events I have experienced. We all wore cap and gown. As a group of students, however, we very much wanted to be able to say a bit to honor Dr. Hannel, who had done so much for all of us. Our request was turned down. My colleagues then selected me as the spokesman and as the one who would share. I again approached the school administration. In our minds, this was our graduation. Alas, they did not share our belief. Request denied. Needless to say, it was not a meaningful time, except for obtaining a master’s degree, something I needed to do out from the way God made me.

The better part of the graduation was that mom and Freida and Tim, with April and Ryan were all in attendance, as well as Lois and Jessica. We made it a good family time together. 

The Spring Trimester
In the spring trimester, I took two final courses, two of the most meaningful courses I have taken in my life. The first was Exceptionality and the second was Administration Internship. 

The Exceptional Children course was about working with special needs children of every kind. We had an LCU instructor for this course, but the heart of it was taught by James Harris, head of special education in one of Lubbock’s more difficult inner-city schools. James Harris was also the head of Texas Teacher’s Certification for the whole state, so his signature is on my Texas teaching certificate. James Harris was the most impactive teacher I have known in my life. He was given only about half the class time, but he packed so much practical experience of working with needy children into the time he had. We also went to his school for a field trip.

The thing I learned so powerfully from James Harris was that you do NOT judge children by how they are acting outwardly. The little boy who disrupts your class just might be going home to a drunk father who vomits on him and beats him every night. The little girl who seems withdrawn, and not doing her work, just might be hungry and scared. Every outward action is coming out from some hidden inner pain or defense. The outward problem cannot be addressed until the inward difficulty is known. This real-world understanding was so refreshing after some of the narrowness I had been taught in move community school.

My task in “Administration Internship” was to shadow a working school principal through the course of his days and to record many different aspects of his job. For my internship, I chose Robert Guerrero, of O.L. Slaton Middle School, because I was familiar with him and his school from my time there as a student teacher the previous semester. What a rich experience this was.

Mr. Guerrero was a superb principal, with his hand always on the “life-blood” of his school, one might say. Regardless of what he was doing, every bell-time between classes, he was out in the halls, greeting students and being seen as part of their lives. I would join him first thing in the morning as he greeted kids arriving at school. During the day, he went back and forth between mundane tasks and dealing with spontaneous crises. 

I followed Mr. Guerrero through a number of days and recorded everything he did. He was very willing to have me shadow him and gave me much good understanding. I have a very large notebook filled with documents from that internship. I also interviewed other Lubbock principals as part of this assignment and attended a school board meeting for the Roosevelt ISD.

Once I had completed the Administration Internship, I was eligible to take the Texas State Principal’s test, and thus I obtained a Texas Principal’s Certificate. On paper, I was qualified to be a principal in any Texas school.

These courses were my last at LCU. I had taken courses there equaling 45 credits, 30 towards the Secondary Education degree and 15 towards the administration certificate. Through this time, I continued looking for a teaching position in some Texas public school.

Directions of Fellowship 
Let me begin this section by stating that, once I had a connection to the Internet when we moved to Fort St. John, I most certainly continued searching to understand this world in which we live. While we lived in our trailer at Applegate Trailer Park, I found an important website that would shape much of how I presently understand things, and that is www.lewrockwell.com. 

I had much to draw from in my own understanding of human action, having lived in a subsistence environment for years. At the same time, you will have ascertained that my strong inclination, inherited from my own father, was towards liberty. Each of my children, when they turned 18, were shocked when they next asked me if they could go out. My response each time was, “Why are you asking me?” It did not take me long reading the Lew Rockwell website to realize that the writers there were sharing the same conclusions I had come to, both in how economics actually works and the value and importance of liberty.

Liberty-first is the mother of peace, prosperity, and order, whereas order-first is the mother of chaos, poverty, and war.

 My thinking about the kingdom is shaped partly by Lew Rockwell, whom Kyle and I had the privilege to meet here in Houston, and many of those who write for his website. You will find that thinking all through what I share. Lew Rockwell is the first news website I read every morning, and I always turn to them first to shape my basic understanding of world events, although I am by no means limited to their understanding. 

Once CityView had become established, Pastors Gary and David began a leadership training class for members of the church who wanted to be more involved in the fellowship. Maureen and I attended these training sessions, held in the Sysco building. Erwin and Lisa Hyatt, in whose home we had been a part of a weekly “cell group,” felt to stay with Trinity, so eventually we switched from their group to one which we held in our trailer. An older couple shared oversight of this gathering with us.

As I sat and listened to the teaching on church leadership from a different perspective than in the move, I had so much to ponder. This was a leadership without condemnation, without putting people “into their place.” It was a leadership into joy and the knowledge of God. The mighty edifice built inside of me by my years in the move, however, would take time to be re-built, and so I simply pondered these things deeply.

I must bring in again our continued fellowship with Ronnie and Gaye Herrin. We visited often in their home, and after a time, began having regular “counseling” sessions with them. There was no question that I was still “ripped apart” inside from our time in community and in leaving community. Yet I continued to believe God that “Blair Valley was our home,” for He had spoken those words to me. 

And so our counseling time with the Herrin’s became very sad to me. They were good friends with Sister Barbara James, and so, I’m sure that they had her view of me. It seemed that my profound faith in God and the vision He had placed inside my heart was not in their picture. Instead, they interpreted the cry of my heart concerning the vision of a Community of Christ as the fetish of a man who was filled with himself and who had little connection with God. – That is how it seemed to me, whether actual or not. 

If they had told me that God had filled my heart with a vision of Himself, but I would have to wait patiently until it was His time, that would have been such strength to me, for it would have been in agreement with a God who had always shaped my heart for Himself. But such a view was not found in move philosophy.  And so their counsel to me was for me to “let go” of that vision as “not-God,” and to get on with the present program. This part of their counsel served only to increase my confusion and pain, for it required me to agree that I was never connected with God on the inside of me and that He had not filled my heart with His understanding.

The last time I saw Barbara James was probably in the spring of 2001. I came home one day and she was sitting in our living room, visiting with Maureen and Lois. I walked through and sat down. In any social setting, I always wait for the other person to recognize me before I respond; being the first to greet another feels like presumption to me, something I don’t do. Barbara James did not look at me or greet me or even recognize my presence in the room. She continued visiting with the others and then eventually left.

I realize, of course, that I cannot know what another person is actually thinking and that I then project my own inadequacies upon them. Nonetheless, that last picture of Barbara James and “move ministry” was one of “we do not know you and we know that God is not in you.” Again, I’m not accusing Sister Barbara of any such thing; I am sharing what I felt inside.

Directions of Work
Through the first few months of 2001, I did a number of different construction jobs. I worked on the home of a sister from the move, Linda Green. I installed a new tiled shower for her, the first time I had worked with bathroom tiles. I contracted with another couple from CityView fellowship, the Woodard’s, and built an entire kitchen for them. It was fun to build a kitchen, but I was not pleased with the final result. You cannot do fine work without fine tools, and my inexpensive tools did not do well enough.

By February, however, we came up short on money for our living expenses. We had lots of bills to pay and nothing to pay them. Out of the blue, a family from CityView handed us a check for $2000, more than enough to cover our needs. At the same time, others were providing for Kyle’s monthly bill at Trinity School, which was not cheap.

In April, I found a job with a local construction company, another hard-driving man similar to Terry Williams in Oregon. I could just barely endure a forty-hour week of hard construction and was soon completely worn out for anything else. I worked for this man for a month. Near the end of this time, I was building cabinets in his small shop behind his house. It was Friday afternoon, and I was worn to a frazzle. In my tiredness, I began making small mistakes in the cabinet work, mistakes that would need correction. Realizing these mistakes would continue, I went in to see the boss, who happened to be home. I told him what was happening and why and that come Monday morning, it would be an easy thing to fix those mistakes. I asked to go home a couple hours early. He agreed.

Then, on Monday morning, when I arrived to continue the cabinet work, the boss and his foreman were waiting for me. Both of them chewed me out for the mistakes I had made. I did not answer; I do not defend myself. When they left, I took about fifteen minutes to fix those mistakes; they really were no big deal. Nonetheless, I do not work inside such disrespect, but neither do I place blame on anyone. I finished the day, and that evening I called the boss and told him that my physical weakness prevented me from being able to fulfill the job. I did not return.

Also in April I connected with another job, an educational editing job. This will take some explanation. This was 2001, and lots of investment money was flowing into new ways of doing things. A company named Edison was moving into education, a private company using public money to do a “better job” at educating kids. This larger company started a subsidiary called Edison Extra, which focused on running summer school programs. Edison Extra had contracted with the state of Missouri to put on summer school programs in several districts throughout the state.

The state provided a certain amount of money for each student who completed summer school. This money then went to Edison Extra who would put on the program and hire local teachers. Edison Extra packed their summer school programs with lots of kids by offering a large number of valuable prizes. 

A brother in the church, named Ron Wood, who had been hired as the accountant for Edison Extra, came to me with an additional need that they had. They had found educators to write courses in all subject fields for the summer program. Those courses would be given by local teachers in each district. But the course syllabuses needed editing, and Edison Extra hired me to do that.

I loved editing these course syllabuses. They were a mess, some much more than others. Educators don’t necessarily know how to write or how to think. I had to straighten out a lot of confusing directions, as well as to correct poorly written text. I did art, language arts, science, sports, math, rocketry, Spanish, and so on. I was paid per page, and I can do that kind of work very fast. In fact, I am partly made for educational writing and editing. I was making more money per hour than I ever had before. 

Then, soon after I had quit the construction job in May, Ron Wood asked me if I would go to Missouri with him to help train the teachers in the various school districts on Edison Extra’s approach to teaching these courses. And so I flew to Missouri several times, both to Kansas City and to St. Louis, always routing through Dallas or Austin, usually accompanying Ron Wood. The first place we visited was Neosho, in southwestern Missouri, then two school districts in the Kansas City area, one in the St. Louis area, and one halfway between.

On one of the flights home, I was stranded in the Dallas airport because of storms and had to spend the night on an airport-supplied cot along with hundreds of other people.

The man who ran Edison Extra, Larrie Reynolds, tackled every problem by throwing tons of money at it. I am the kind of person who requires carefully thought out plans that can work. Needless to say, there was not a real connection between him and me. I just went with the flow, but did not always care for the results. At the same time, although I am very comfortable teaching things I have developed over time, I’m not very good at spontaneous presentations. I did my best, but I don’t think Mr. Reynold’s was pleased with my performance.

Then, in June, as the summer schools began, I spent a week in Raytown, near Kansas City, helping to supply the teachers with everything they needed. The summer schools were packed with kids, all hoping to win one of the ten-speed bicycles or other cool stuff. After that, however, Mr. Reynolds did not keep me on to continue the editing work, though I sent him letters explaining what I could do for his business success. I am convinced he had no idea how much what I did was worth to Edison Extra in turning poorly written and confusing syllabuses into something easy for any teacher to follow. 

Another Closed Door 
June is also the month when all the school districts of Texas are actively looking for new teachers to fill the openings in the next school year. There is always a shortage of teachers – why, I would eventually find out. I went to a job fair in Lubbock. All the big school districts in the state were there, looking for teachers. I connected with the Fort Worth representative and filled out the application for that district. 

Fort Worth ISD was interested in hiring me, so I drove to Fort Worth a couple of times by myself to interview and to look for a home for us. By the first of July, I had signed a contract to teach for Fort Worth ISD. I was presented with an eighth-grade English classroom in an inner city junior high. It all looked bleak and difficult to me, but this was what I had worked towards for the last few years, so I bravely continued. Then, in mid-July, that position was no longer available. I had signed a contract, so the Fort Worth administration was trying to find me another spot.

Meanwhile, towards the end of July, we drove down to Fort Worth together, Maureen and I with the children, to look for a new home for us. We found one for sale in Azle, Texas, just outside of Fort Worth, that seemed to be ideal for us. It was an older blue house with a new master bedroom suite added on. It was shaped very oddly and uniquely. It had a carport with a room that could be a shop as well as a small barn and two acres of land (filled with nightshade and other weeds). It seemed to be in our price range and the owner was willing to work out a deal with us to buy it. 

This was not a “purchase,” more an “intent to buy” that we signed with him. Meanwhile, the house needed some work done to it, so he agreed that we could stay overnight in the house while I began that work.

Now, Maureen and the children loved the house initially. I did as well, though I had a check inside that it really wasn’t the Lord’s provision for us. I liked my plans for the place, however, and so we persisted. That first night we stayed in the house, in the new master bedroom suite, Maureen and I both woke up at the same time, sat up, and looked at one another in horror. “This is NOT our home,” we both said almost at the same time. 

[In later years, the Azle area would become a place of contention over fracking, which poisoned all the water, including the ground underneath the blue house, along with leaks of poisonous gas in places.]

At the same time, the Fort Worth district was not finding another spot for me. We agreed mutually that we would go our separate ways.

We drove home shocked and discouraged. It was only a couple of weeks before the school year would start, and I had no teaching job, no way to support my family. It was three years, now, since we had left Blair Valley, and other than my continuing in college, every door we had sought to step through had closed tightly against us.

Placing Jesus Upon
I wrote the first paragraphs of this chapter a few days before I actually began to write the text. When I did begin to write, I was astonished at the great calm I felt inside regarding giving this account of my life. It was as if everything had settled out through the intervening weeks, with all the pain from my whole life until this time finally placed into the full rest of Christ.

Nonetheless, there are several things in this chapter that I must bring into resolution, placing the Lord Jesus upon all things, and giving Him thanks.

The first is my attitude towards Lubbock Christian University, outside of the Graduate Education program. I did not realize that I have not forgiven the college administration for the bad experience of our graduation. That lack of forgiveness had shown itself once a year from then until now when I received the yearly alumni magazine from LCU. That is, I would gleefully toss it into the trash can next to my chair. 

I would ask the administration of LCU to forgive me for my bad attitude. I was wrong.

Then, in this particular chapter of my life, only one episode brought me deep nostalgia as I wrote about it, and that is my time at O.L. Slaton Middle School in both student teaching and interning with Principal Guerrero. The truth is I love working with students, especially at the middle school age. Even though one’s connection with young people in the public schools is much less than in the communities, only one hour five days a week, still being their teacher means a whole lot to me. 

By 2009, I would no longer have the stamina to handle junior high kids; college students are much easier, for they require no babysitting. But the loss of working with those children is one which I carry inside the promise of an endless life, that what belongs to me will come back to me in its time. I will know middle school children in my classroom again, in the joy of being human as the revelation of God forever. I know that it is true.

I have never “gotten away” from the move, for we have visited family members back in the communities many times until now. Yet my final experiences with Sister Barbara and with the Herrin’s would close out any spiritual relationship I had with that fellowship. It was a closing out in grief and loss, found inside the profound belief that my heart was bad.

And so I now place the Lord Jesus Christ upon that grief and loss, upon all my confusing interaction with move ministry and philosophy. I know that He carried me through every moment and that Jesus does all things well. I give Him all thanks.

And I bless Sister Barbara James, along with Gaye and Ronnie. I know that their hearts were good and filled with Jesus towards me. I draw them into my own heart, into the blood shed for us sprinkled there, and release them into all that the Father is inside of and through them.

God is good, all the time.