"Why am I HERE?"
I am writing this post from exactly the same spot I sat at the first day I arrived in Midland Texas during the summer of 1984. As a young teen, I was quite preoccupied with the conquest of the preacher's son's heart. I couldn't even imagine what "flat" land could look like.
I got a real good view of it when we arrived here.
And, my first thoughts upon seeing this place were uttered in prayer "Why am I Here???"
Moving is never easy for a teenager but the transition was not greatly assisted by the fact that I was leaving a new home near the foothills of the Rocky Mountains for a spot of dry land in the middle of the West Texas desert.
The irony that I am sitting here some two decades later watching my own children play is not lost on me. However, I think I just may have had an aha moment that I wasn't really looking for...
My son, who is just barely four years old, just came up to me...smiled and asked me a six word question. For most mother's that would not seem like such a big deal in fact his request for French Fries (I bought apples) might even be a bit of an annoyance.
For me the words...any words from him...are absolutely magical.
Less than two years ago, little Aidan was almost completely non-verbal. I was told that he had a disorder that keeps him from feeling his body and that without over 30 hours a week of intervention he may crawl into an autistic-like shell and be unable to communicate. The therapy and treatments recommended involved a full time job of intevening and would cost somewhere between 6K and 8K per month. There was no way we could manage that kind of medical care and so my energy shifted from typical stay at home Mom stuff to a full throttle focus on providing him with every intervention and service we could find. Most of them were things I would train in or read about and then devote myself to working with him.
In the midst of this my husband decided that DFW did not offer him the opportunities in his career that he needed to create in order to keep us fed and me working so diligently with my son. We had spent every dime, and two years of exhausting ourselves trying to survive and live and intervene all on our own.
I wouldn't be honest if I failed to admit that I was far less than thrilled at the prospect of returning to this place.
If you've never been out here I would say a much better description of the geography would be simply to take a look at some images of Afghanistan and but imagine it rolled out flat with a giant rolling pin. If you do that you about have it.
If my parents did not still live here I don't think that we would have even considered it but with one phone call and a trip out here my husband became the clinical director for a non profit counseling agency. Within weeks he had found a job he fell in love with and he also very quickly fell in love with the "limitless" horizon that the Midland sky offers.
Nonetheless the job was landed and I followed my husband out here last August. Our housing quest took six months of bunking up with my parents. I am fully convinced is more difficult to find that natural water out here. But over Christmas we settled into a little college in the historic district of Midland and I am finally finding time to reflect upon and discover the realities of what this transition is meaning to me.
Frankly, having lived in the desert in high school, I have never understood its appeal to the mystics of early Christianity or the reasons why there are people in this town who love it and commit to stay here for decades even when they don't have to. However, it isn't taking too long to look at this town with new eyes.
In truth its what is underneath the land, not so much what's on top of it, that brings almost everybody here. We are an oil and gas community and without the liquid gold nothing much happens here. In fact Midland's economy flows in a cycle of booms and busts that get pretty dramatic at times. Currently its in a bust and so there is a rush for housing and more jobs than can be filled.
What fascinates me though, is that there are folks who chose to remain here...they even fall in love with this little town in the desert and they remain. They chose to be here through it all and they chose to create beauty in a place where the definition of beauty is something that must be actively cultivated and created.
Like a rose in the desert the town has chosen to thrive with a strength and beauty that comes from the diligent nurture of its people.
And they are a unique people when it comes to caring for 'their own'.
I must say that this time around the move to Midland has been very different for me. The pressure of being a mother of a special needs child has been overwhelming at times. I felt alone and pressed in, and I wasn't sure what I needed to create to help my child discover his voice and become free from the prison that would be his body without specific intervention.
However, from the minute we announced we were arriving here, this town embraced us with open arms. In fact, there is a ministry here called SHARE that reached out to us...we have found friends, social events, support groups and very supportive ears and shoulders. I knew before the moving trucks came that I was no longer going to be alone in my mission to reach my son.
Through friends here we also became aware of a special place that I am not sure exists in the same form anywhere else in the country. The Midland Children's Rehabilitation Clinic has offered the full range of treatment that my son needs for his medical issues and they do so free of charge with no income requirements. Its truly the first place I have found that will partner with me in helping him the way he needs to be helped and I have looked at cities all across the country.
We weren't looking for these services when we chose to move back to the desert and in all truth they pretty much found us. We moved here solely for my husband's new job.... But, I am discovering something that first came to me during a concert they held out in the desert (Rock the Desert)....There was this quiet moment where the band was singing a ballad...During that momnent in the cool desert night...I did something I have never done in all my years out here. I put my feet into the sand of the desert and I connected with it. As I did a wave of peace washed over me and I looked up at the amazing stars in the night sky.
I began wondering at that moment what it was that made the desert so appealing to the Christian mystics and even to Christ himself. I realized that this time in life was going to be a season of connecting...a season of integrating what life I have within me with a place that on the surface may not look like it holds much life.
And yet I am discovering life. There is nothing like the mist of solitude to usher me through a quiet night and into an undistracted awareness of God's presence. Its something that is much easier to experience here than anywhere else.
And, there is nothing like the people of the desert.
Midlanders seem to have learned something that only comes from living in a place like this. If you want beauty you get to create it. If you want water, you get to find it and use it carefully. If you want to create a city that cares for its own...you roll up your sleeves and you do it.
There are still days I am ready to pack it up and head for the hill country don't get me wrong. This is very much an adjustment for me...but when my son came up to me a few minutes ago and said "Mommy I would like to have a cookie!" I had this aha moment...
My child spoke.
He speaks a lot now actually in fact most people on first observation don't even realize that something was wrong. But my thoughts go back in wonderment to the time I sat in this spot asking God why on earth he brought me to this desert... "Why did you bring me here God?"
Where I thought he had most likely abandoned all care for me...I now realize may well have been that he knew some day I would be brought home again...home to find healing for my son...and healing from my soul...home to discover for myself what it is that makes the people of this desert thrive and what it takes to create the kind of beauty that we see in the roses of the desert. The things and people that thrive here do so because of persistence, diligence, strength and dedication...but the beauty that is created as a result is substantial and it thrives.
This time I am home to discover and connect with the beauty of the desert. Its not always easy for me to see but the more that I chose to look the more I find I quickly discover.
