The other day I posted on Facebook that we moved to Lincoln, Nebraska 17 years ago.  Some of my friends know the story, but I want to share because sometimes the most obvious, logical way is not necessarily the road to follow.

Doug and I have always been “fly by the seat of our pants” kind of people.  Yes, I’m a list maker and a calendar keeper (more like three of them), but when it comes to making decisions, some of them major, we tend to go with our gut.  Such was the case when moving from Cincinnati to Lincoln.  Doug had decided it was time to go back to school after 20 years of teaching and so now was the time to choose where.  It came down to two GTA offers; Wright State University just up the road, or the University of Nebraska.  Distance wise,  the logical choice was Wright State, but we took the chance and flew to Nebraska to check it out and it just “felt” right.  We talked about all the issues with logistics – finding a new job for me with insurance to take care of everyone while he was going to school, finding affordable housing and good places for the boys to go to school.  Loading up 20 years worth of married life in a truck and driving 800 miles from home and family.  So then we visited Wright State.

At Wright State, we could conceivably have Doug drive to campus, I could stay in my job and the boys could stay in their schools.  On paper it made more sense.  But as Doug and I were walking back to the car after the visit, we looked at each other and said it didn’t “feel” right.  So we chose Nebraska.

Finding a job for me was the next hurdle.  I had contacted all the local schools I could find, interviewed at the district I am in now and nothing happened.  In order for this to work, I HAD to have a full time job.  Well, in God’s perfect timing, I happened to be introduced to someone, who happened to know of a job opening and she called her principal to recommended me.  She didn’t know me from Adam at that point.  The bad thing was, we were scheduled to fly home the next day.  The good news was, I had a message on my answering machine that the principal wanted an interview.  The bad news was I would need to find money to fly back to Lincoln right away.  The good news was that my principal called me into her office to tell me that we had made extra money on the musical I had done that spring and she was giving it to me.  Just enough for the airfare.  If that’s not a God thing I don’t know what is.  Anyway, long story short, I interviewed, prayed he would give me the job and he offered it to me on the spot.  Remember, it just “felt” right.

Great friends and some of Doug’s high school students showed up the morning of the move and they worked all day loading that truck and loading the conversion van and getting my car, stuffed with a ton of our clothes, up on the trailer behind the truck.  We left much later than we planned, but we were determined to go ahead and drive to our first destination anyway, even if it meant driving into the wee hours because we wanted to arrive in Lincoln on schedule.  And then the disasters began.

We were partially around the beltway when the first disaster happened.  Somehow the brakes had locked on the trailer and had begun to rub together to the point where it caught fire.  I had two of the boys with me in the conversion van and Doug had one with him riding in the truck.  As they realized they had a fire on their hands, they pulled over and started pouring bottled water over it.  I think they eventually discovered a fire extinguisher and the fire was out.  However, we hadn’t even left the city, and by the time he got someone to help with the trailer it was much to late to get out that night and we had already turned over our house keys, so we found a hotel and stayed the night.

The next day we had to wait for a while for the company to bring another trailer to switch out for the first one and the hotel was kind enough to let us hang around.  In the meantime however, the skies darkened, the wind began to blow and the heavens opened.  The hotel asked everyone to go the bottom level of the hotel and we stood looking at the entrance doors of the hotel as they struggled to stay closed and the wind blew sideways. The tornado was just a few miles away and all I could think of was that everything we owned in the world was out in that parking lot.  First a fire,then a tornado.  Was someone trying to tell use something?  If so, it was a little late now!

Thankfully the rest of the trip was uneventful and we pulled into the little rental home we had found.  Now, I’m sure you’re wondering about the ghost part, right?  Well, that lovely little home is haunted (footsteps in an empty upstairs all the time – I’m not kidding), but it served us very well, with landlords who were willing to allow us to work on the house in lieu of some rent.  Another God thing.

Seventeen years later, we’re still here and we’re blessed to call this town home.  We’ve met some amazing people and had some wonderful opportunities.  Just think what we would have missed out on if we had been completely logical and not gone with our gut?  Sometimes the fires, tornadoes and ghosts in our lives are there to see if your resolve is strong enough.  I’m glad ours was.