The Trouble with Transitions (Chris)

Well, we've finally arrived in Texas. The closing went without a hitch, and in fact got along with the young couple who were buying our house quite well, it had to be the most entertaining closing in history, as most of the dialogue between constant signatures and wide-eyes at mortgage payoff schedules was just quoting lines from Team America or Office Space back and forth.

I could dedicate a whole post to the drive from Denver to Dallas pulling a U-Haul trailer and the challenges that lie within, but I'll spare you the minutiae of our largely uninteresting challenges that interest...well, pretty much us.

However, as we now begin the house search in Texas, and Sarah begins to get ready to teach at UHS (while I sort of sit in employment limbo after a, in college football terms, "soft verbal" employment offer from a school), I need to confess...I now am sick of transition.

Pretty much from ages 0-22, you live life on a regimented schedule, school starts here, it ends there, you do this, do that, there it is. I was fine with that, and then I graduated from college, and I couldn't wait for "the next thing." I would struggle a little bit thinking of where I was working because I wanted to go on to the next thing, I couldn't fathom just staying at one place forever. I needed to have my scheduled transitions. It how all American, school-going kids are raised, and I got intensely comfortable with that system. I had many conversations with friends my age in those newly formative post-college years where the idea of 50 years and a gold watch from a company seemed absurd. Everything was a stepping stone, "I'll do this job for a little bit, to do this job, and do this to accomplish this, etc etc."

Allow me now to say that I am beyond tired of the stepping stones, the transitions. I ache, and Sarah agrees, for a routine, even a rut. While all of our most recent transitions have been exceptional and incredible answers to prayer (jobs, selling the house, moving, getting, uh, MARRIED), we are ready to settle down, have a routine, and spend some years in delightful, comfortable predictability. I know that times will change, kids will be born and life will throw us some curveballs, and we begin the transitions all over again, but now that we are possibly within a month of being settled in Waco (doing some negotiations with a home owner in the Twin Rivers/Bear Ridge area currently), and jobs starting within 6 weeks, it looks like our routine, our non-transitionary period is upon us, and we could not be more excited. I know there will come a time where we can't wait for something new to spice things up, but as it stands right now, the calm after the storm is what we most eagerly await now. The doldrums of windless sea sounds paradisaical now, at least we'll be able to stop and enjoy the view once and a while.