#5 Identity Crisis

In the past year, we'd been spending a lot of pillow talk on the possibility that maybe this place wasn't where we wanted to raise our children. Even though we have great friends and a great church and a school that our kids actually like, none of it seemed quite right. Our closest friends just weren't as close - we were all busy educating our children in different school settings, making new circles of friends, and playing different sports, and starting new hobbies. We have a lot of amazing people in our community, but maybe blaming it on being the introverts we are, we didn't feel a depth with most of them. It's started to feel like most people (ourselves included) here are working their tails off while trying to project through social media that it's all worth it. And in the end, will our kids be able to sustain a life here when they're adults? Maybe all these thoughts and questions in all sincerity were just God pushing deeply at our cores to cause us to position ourselves in a listening posture for what He was about to do?

We toyed around with living in other similar vacation spots - Florida, Hawaii, the Carolinas. But nothing was quite right - either the job, the education options, or the weather.

Somewhere in the middle of this search for identity, I'd been handed a book by "accident" to read - it was Jen Hatmaker's Interrupted - When Jesus Wrecks Your Comfortable Christianity. From the first pages, I knew I was headed for mind-altering "Jesus is gonna shake my world up" thinking. Her questions centered around asking God for a "holy passion" that could be directed into a calling that could never be mistaken as "predictable or boring." I started the book in January and closed it again soon after out of fear of what I felt moving in my heart.

My husband had breakfast with a close friend and mentor just before the Texas offer presented itself. He and his wife have raised three incredible triplets who are all about to be twenty-one. He was talking about their choice to raise them here in a loving home about a mile or so from the beach. He admitted that they loved their hometown and the memories they gave their children, but he also said something that he might even forgot he'd said. He said, "I'd choose adventure every time." Hmmm, adventure? For me, adventure is not jumping out of airplanes or being chased on safari. It's always been more like feeling like God is opening seemingly crazy doors for our family into something unexpected and walking through them holding hands.

That's where we're at right now. Holding hands, and going back to visit Waco one more time on an invite from the specialty department and their families. They want to meet us, take us out to dinner, and of course, talk to him a little more. They want us to see if we can imagine ourselves living there. We want to see if we can imagine ourselves living there. We want to hear God's still small voice saying, "yes, you can do this, and I will make it more than you can imagine" or "no, this is just the first step in where I'm leading you, but thanks for listening and following my lead."And so we follow the path of adventure, filled with trust, and a good mix of feelings between overwhelmed, excited, and cautious.

#4 True Confessions

I will admit I have an addiction. I am addicted to home improvement shows. I grew up going into open houses with my parents which led to constant dreaming of what might be our next home. It was fun. And disappointing. But still fun. Then that cable channel HGTV opened a whole new world of showing other people looking at houses and actually buying them! So, by the time I'm actually a grown married woman, I can't wait to buy, renovate, and decorate my own fixer upper. Speaking of Fixer Upper...there's this show. Have you heard of it? It's actually called Fixer Upper, and it's where this hilarious couple Chip and Joanna Gaines help the non-Davidian, non-biker gang members but still actual Waco, Texas residents buy and fix up sad homes. But it's not the homes and it's not just that these homes range in price from $25,000 to $400,000, but it's the fact that these two in just the matter of a year, draw people into their world of silliness and obvious mutual affection for each other, their four little children, and their menagerie of animals. And instead of watching homeowners struggle with DIY renovation disasters, here was a show that showed "experts" doing it all for these people who were a part of their community - they went to their church, or taught or had gone to the nearby university (Baylor) Chip graduated from. And each of these homes was idyllic - an urban farmhouse, reinvented shabby chic styling with Texas sized flair. But seriously, it's still Waco, right? 

Well, one day, out of the blue (which happens pretty easily thanks to world of email and technological inventions of networking sites like Facebook or Linked In), my husband received the typical recruiter contact for a job in his specialty in - you guessed it - Waco, Texas. He forwarded me the email because he thought it was funny, and he knows I love Chip and Jojo. (He loves Chip too and actually watches to see what funny thing he will eat, say, or do next.) I had literally just posted to my Facebook page the day before a shared link of Joanna Gaines sharing how she listened to God guiding her over the years into her calling. It caught my attention beyond the who was saying it and felt that WHAT she was saying resonated deeply as it was the same topic that I'd been studying and searching God for in my Bible study small group. One of the women on the teaching team at our church had been speaking about looking at our passions as women and seeing where God wants to use that for our Calling. Well, my passions are writing and dreaming about home decorating (insert Pinterest addiction phase here). This heart searching and sharing of my passions in my small group led to God bringing a woman into my life who wanted me to write a book of her life story. Every word of it has brought me to my knees over how God orchestrates everything, even the craziest outwardly appearing messes for His future plans.  It's an amazing story that covers everything from San Bernadino to Austria and to the beaches of SoCal, even including an appearance on The Bachelor (hers, not mine). But you'll have to buy the book.   

Anyway, here I am heading down the path of book writing and chasing my calling through my passion. But I'm still thinking in my head (which is hard because when I'm writing in my bedroom, there is a lot of freeway noise outside my open window - no air conditioning, remember?) but where are we CALLED to live? What is God calling us to do?  We've realized that our hopes of buying a house here in North County San Diego is not really an option (winning the lottery probably won't happen since we don't buy tickets and neither of us has the hopes of some inheritance coming our way) and this stinking noisy rental with electrical outlets that only sometimes work and will probably catch the house on fire from their sparks isn't really a longterm living situation. I mean we are 40 years old now - did I say that yet? Oh yeah, we are officially mid-life crisis mode. We've got uninvited back pain, need reading glasses, and can't seem to ever fit into the size jeans we used to. Oh wait, that's just me at 40. My husband is an amazingly fit triathlete who rides his bike at least 50 miles a week and runs 10 miles just for fun. But his mid-life crisis looks more like wondering will he be able to give our children a stable home to remember instead of all these places we've hopped around to? And how will he be able to make it to their school events if his commute gets any longer and he already doesn't get to see them more than an hour or two most weeknights? Oh, and that "perfect" job he's been at for seven years - yeah, it's not so perfect. And not just because it's physically hard holding up the leg of a 300lb woman who's getting a hip replacement, but hard because all the hours and extra work he doesn't get paid for have left him realizing he's not able to pursue the leadership level he's hoped to achieve as he's learned so many things in healthcare that come naturally to him in terms of efficiency and productivity.  

That brings me back to the recruiter's job email. In Waco.  So, it turns out that we were headed to Texas for a family wedding, something that was booked months before and we'd added a few extra days onto our vacation, so we could see my grandmother. Well, suddenly these hospital people in Waco wanted to meet with my husband, and it just so happens that we'll be 90 minutes away from that hospital.   Here's the point where the reader asks, "why would you ever give up a job in San Diego for Waco?" Well, here's the tidbit that really got our attention - the job paid exactly the same as he's making in sunny CA. So...with a cost of living that's half what Carlsbad costs, it's like getting paid double. To live in a small town in Texas of course. A LOT smaller.   But it turns out that instead of a government run union-ruled (aka excuses to be lazy at work) bureaucratic mess of a hospital, this Texas hospital "exists to serve all people by providing personalized healthcare and wellness through exemplary care, education, and research as a Christian ministry of healing." Say what? Are they even allowed to say that? Where we live now, progressives rule, so most of the work propaganda is centered around making sure employees celebrate diversity and find ways to increase productivity and efficiency, but not actually institute those findings because that would mean reinventing the wheel. You could ask your union rep, but he probably won't get back to you anytime soon. So, why not explore this mythical utopia of a missions-minded healthcare system and talk to some folks, right? 

I'll cut to the chase here. Three hours of meetings later, my husband came outside all starry-eyed and filled with a bit of disbelief at what he heard and witnessed. A Bible in every meeting room, doctors who spoke about how much they valued their families, churches, and time to enjoy outdoors and vacations. Oh, and everything he'd been doing above and beyond his actual job description at his current job (and not getting a dime extra for) are things they are specifically in need of...and all fall under his dream of potential healthcare executive. So, influenced by the effects of a Chip-and-JoJo-tinted-Waco, we both start imagining what God might be doing here. Dreams, passions, timing, opportunity, AND affordability all colliding...were they all intersecting into the shape of a star - a Texas star?  

#3 California dreamin' takes a turn

After moving into our beach-close twin-home, I went to enroll my soon-to-be kindergartner at the neighborhood school the following weekday. Even though our dream had always been to send our kids to private school (heck, I wanted to be a teacher so I could teach where my kids could attend), we were sending him to public school because a California six figure salary couldn't afford private school, a four bedroom rental, a car loan, and the difference of our Arizona mortgage left us after our tenants paid us rent. I filled out the stack of paperwork, handed it to the office lady, and almost fainted when she said, "ok, he will be student number 33 in his class." Say, what? Thirty-three kindergartners and one teacher? Um, ok, thanks. I left the school and cried the mile and a half home. This wasn't what I'd imagined. All I could envision now was my super shy son curled up in a corner, successfully hiding from the teacher because he was so overwhelmed by starting two weeks late AND never having attended pre-school. I wasn't worried about this academic abilities. No, this was all purely personality-based fears. 

Just as I had done to discover our new college that had led us to Vacationland in the first place, I got on the internet to scour what my other school options were. And lo and behold there was a tiny Christian school less than 3 miles from our new home. Somehow, God provided for us as we proceeded to pay (supplemented by my tuition discount only income) for private school, and move one more time over the following 5 years. We finally short sold our upside down Arizona home in 2011, and left the private school in 2013.  The end of 2013 had brought the end of all the consumer debt we'd accrued from our years in Arizona "where everything will be cheaper," so it seemed like maybe we should think about buying a home in Southern California!  Our landlord who was going through a divorce, informed us that he was selling the house we lived in that was in a neighborhood we'd grown to love.  So maybe it was time to buy, right? But because we short sold our last house, we had no equity and therefore no down payment. Also attributed to our "smart" AZ move was the attempt at a zero down, not-til-later adjustable arm loan, that was discovered by a third of America to be a cheap ploy at hoodwinking the middle class. So there was no way we were doing that again! 

So, the next step up was to consider 3.5% down. Ok, so what's 3.5% on the cheapest decent house you can find in coastal North County, you might ask? Well, that number lies somewhere right around 500,000 for a fixer that's not big enough, nice enough, or worth it enough to sell your mother for the down payment chunk we did not have lying around (and no one else in our family did either). We did manage to scrape together the money for closing costs and most of the down payment over the next year (during which we had to move again into a not-as-nice rental for the same amount we were previously paying just to stay in the area that we were in) In the blink of an eye and a turn of the economy, home prices had climbed, and now that same 500k crappy fixer in Carlsbad was now only to be found in North-you-will-probably-get-robbed-or-shot Oceanside or way-too-far-inland-for-a-reasonable-commute Vista. 

Wah-wah. Now what? 

#1 The power of a dream

When you dream about your future, do you believe that those dreams will come true? Or are they frivolous conjurings of wishful thinking that spackle the holes left behind by failed attempts or others' woundings? Or maybe your greatest fears along with the call to adventure packaged to look like bungee jumping with duct tape.

I dream a lot. In my sleep and in my wakefulness. Sometimes I share my dreams with others. Usually just my husband. My nighttime dreams are usually strange mixed up visions of what I talked about the previous day and what crazy thoughts my mind has twisted into an altered reality.

On a morning in early April, I had one of these altered reality predictions. It followed a week of crazy God-incidences. As a want-to-be writer, I often awake with topics or book ideas that have popped into my head, but are usually forgotten once I'm vertical.

This morning, I awoke with a strange premonition. I had begun a blog. Not so strange in this generation of blog-mania. It was the topic more than the mode that surprised me. I saw the title of this fanciful blog even in my fully awake existence.

"Why I Moved to Waco, Texas"

Say what? That's crazy. I live in Carlsbad - San Diego, California. WHY would I ever move to a place that conjures up images of almost everything opposite of what Southern Californians exist for - sand is for beaches not to empty out of boots, cattle are for Chic-Fil-A signs not your backyard, guns, well, you know what comparison looks like. Unless you're military, police, or in Compton, Southern Californians stare mouth agape at Texas-toting "packing-in-my-purse-Mamas." But that's a topic for another day.

So three short months later, I've begun said dreamt up blog.


A lot has happened to make my "dream come true." It's all unexpected and a bit inconceivable, but it has become a reality nonetheless.


Follow my family's path as we leave Vacationland to pursue Waco.