Ginny, my daughter, was beside me as I wove our van through a thick ribbon of traffic. We were having a girls’ day out at the mall in Richmond, Virginia—dress shopping for her senior prom.
“What are you thinking for colors, Gin?” I asked.
“Anything except for black or red,” she said. “I’ve already done that.”
I smiled, remembering all the dresses. All the dances. All the sweet, girl-growing-up milestones. But just as quickly, my smile faded. Even those sweet memories were pocked with a certain amount of guilt.
We had moved three times in four years for my husband Jeff’s job. Ginny and her two younger brothers, Johnny and Alex, had been shuttled across the country.
Three years earlier Jeff was offered a transfer to Arizona. That time we decided it was best for him to make the move without the kids and me. Though it was hard to be separated, we just couldn’t uproot them again.
Still, there was the guilt. Guilt that I had made them change their lives so many times and that our family wasn’t all living together under one roof. Was that what God really wanted for us? I wondered.
“I’ll treat for lunch today, okay?” Ginny said.
“Thanks, Ginny. Sounds great.” I glanced at my girl—those vivid green eyes, that bright smile. I could hardly believe she’d be graduating soon and going to college.
Jeff had put in for time off to come to Ginny’s graduation, but who knew if a last-minute job emergency would come up? Oh, how I longed for us all to be together again.
Jeff and I go way back. We met in kindergarten in our small Iowa town. Our childhoods were steady and solid, both families rooted in Midwest farming soil. When we married we bought a house a few hours from where we grew up.
Jeff got a job as an engineer at a local aluminum company. We started a family. First came Ginny. Then Johnny. Then Alex. We were so content in our little home with farm fields scalloping our yard.
I was thrilled the kids would grow up the way we had—rooted in the same Midwestern background.
Then, one day, when Ginny was about 12, Jeff came home from work with big news. “Sarah, the company offered me a promotion,” he said.
“Oh, honey! That’s great!” I said.
“Just one thing…”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It’s…well, it’s in San Antonio.”
I had to have heard him wrong. “As in San Antonio, Texas?”
Jeff nodded. “I know we hadn’t planned on this,” he added. “But I think it could be good. For you, for me and for the kids too. It would expand their horizons.”
Jeff and I spent the next few weeks praying about the move. We talked it over forward and backward and prayed some more. The offer was good. In the end, the choice was clear. Lone Star state, here we come!
We packed the kids, dog and goldfish into our van and drove nearly 1,000 miles south to the new house. There, the brown boxes lining the walls made it seem like we were in a crazy cardboard maze.
The boys quickly disappeared, as if hiding from their new lives. Jeff and I went through the house looking for them.
“Try their bedroom closet,” said Ginny, her arms still wound tightly around our golden retriever.
That’s where we found them, talking about how they missed their grandparents and our old house back in Iowa. Jeff carried the boys out from the closet. Tears streaked their faces. It broke my heart.
Eventually, though, we all settled in. The boys made friends through basketball, football and baseball. Ginny played volleyball and filled our home with giggling girls.
Our neighbors were welcoming, most of them transplants to Texas too. Jeff and I found a great church. For two years life moved along with a steady, sweet patter.
Then the Texas plant closed. We moved again. Back to Iowa—but to a different town from the one we’d lived in before. Two years after that? Jeff was transferred to Virginia.
That was when I went from questioning God to getting good and mad. “This isn’t what I wanted, Lord,” I complained each night. “Moving the kids every time they get settled tears my soul. I want stability for them, remember? Roots.”
Thankfully, the kids fell into a new groove again, even if I didn’t. They made good grades and tons of new friends. That’s why, when Jeff was offered the job in Arizona, we decided it was best to let the kids be.
“I just can’t put you guys through that kind of change again. I’ll fly home as much as I can,” Jeff promised.
But our lives did change. When Johnny or Alex needed fatherly encouragement, sometimes I had to step into the role and imagine what Jeff would say. If all the kids needed to be at three places at once, I had to juggle the driving. I missed my husband and the kids missed their dad.
“Look at the positives,” I reminded them one evening as we huddled around Alex’s birthday cake. A work project had gone into overtime and Jeff hadn’t been able to make it home for Alex’s special day.
“We’re a family and we love one another. Love is like glue. It keeps us close even when we’re apart.” We sang “Happy Birthday,” but the absence of Jeff’s voice echoed loudest of all.
Now the guilt stabbed at me again as we inched toward the shopping mall. Lord, I prayed, I know I complain a lot. But that’s because I love my family so much. Help me believe that this was all your will and not my fault.
Just then Ginny turned in her seat to face me and took a deep breath. “Mom, you need to know something,” she said, “because Johnny and Alex and I realize how much it bugs you.”
“Know what, sweetheart?”
“You need to know that moving us kids was the best thing you’ve ever done.”
What?
“The best thing?” I asked.
“Remember that thing you said about love being like glue? You were right. The boys and I are tight,” she said. “We trust and depend on each other, and always will. And all of us have learned to make friends easily. Plus, we adapt really well to new situations.” She squeezed my arm. “And so do you.”
“But, Gin, I feel so badly for making you guys leave your friends and…”
She stopped me. “Mom, when I have my own kids, we’ll move. At least once.” Ginny paused. “Okay, just once.”
We both laughed. I squeezed the steering wheel, trying to blink the tears from my eyes. Where I had seen hurt and upheaval, my daughter had seen growth and goodness. Growth and goodness that could’ve come only from one divine and loving source.
I’d been so caught up in blaming myself that I could hardly feel God’s presence.
Yet, when a boy slid in next to Alex at the lunch table his first day at a new school, when a teacher encouraged Johnny or Ginny met a great pastor at youth group? Each time my children were comforted? It was God.
And the rest? Ginny’s upcoming graduation, our family having to live in separate states for another year, maybe more? Jeff getting another transfer? No matter where the future led, God would be with us, keeping us rooted in the deepest, richest, most nurturing soil of all—faith and the love of family.
“Let’s do lunch before we hit the shops,” said Ginny. “Where to?”
“Anywhere,” I said. “Anywhere at all.”
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