Twenty Years Ago

On this day in 1993, Chris and I pulled into town.  Chris was driving our small moving truck which pulled his car.  I was following behind in my vehicle.  We communicated with walkie talkies.  We had just spent three days on the road traveling from our home in California, then we spent a couple of days with his family in Joplin before heading to our final destination.  We had only been married eleven months.

We had no jobs, no home, but were eager to settle in and see what adventures lay ahead.  We spent our first night at the Christian Campus House and eagerly began our apartment search the next morning.  By that afternoon we had signed a lease and were moving ourselves into a 2-bedroom townhouse.  We couldn't believe that for $370 we could get such a large and nice apartment.  We had been paying $550 a month for a tiny run down apartment.

The humidity stifled us and sapped our energy very quickly, but each morning we set out job searching and getting to know our new surroundings.  We signed on with temp agencies.  Our plan was to work for a year, save money, then attend MU grad school after we had become state residents.  God had other plans.

My first temp job was working the front desk at a doctor's office.  I remained there in various capacities until Michaela was born four years later.  Chris worked a few different temp jobs, but within that first month he temped at a small emerging company called Carfax.  There were twelve employees.  A special segment on the company had just run on 60 Minutes and they were expecting a deluge of phone calls to their 800 number.  Chris helped field those calls.  As the calls died down, the office manager kept finding things for him to do.  In October he was officially hired after working the 90 day temp contract. He's still there, one of about 500 employees.

We bought a house.  We made lifelong friends.  We gave birth to three kids.  We traveled.  We bought another house.  We adopted two kids.  We traveled some more.  We made more lifelong friends.  We never went to grad school.

We had no idea what lay ahead of us when we pulled away from that $550 apartment in California.  Now looking back we stand amazed.  First of all we can't believe it has been twenty years.  We still feel young, and at times it feels like yesterday that we were heading out for a day at Balboa Beach.  I never would have dreamed all that has happened, but this I know.  God has blessed us more than we could have imagined.  He has grown our family in ways we never thought of.  He has provided in amazing ways.  He has made us look forward to the next twenty years, whatever they may hold, wherever they may take us, however we get there.  Wow!