Lessons Learned in Abilene

In 1995 God called my husband to establish a physical therapy school at Hardin Simmons University. God’s sense of humor brought two runaway Baptists to a Baptist University in a very Baptist town. My three favorite things are water, trees and hills. Outside of Abilene where we moved we had no water, no trees and no hills! I arrived there with a fresh cancer diagnosis and surgery and knew no one. I left behind my house, my children, my aging dog, my job, my car, my friends and my whole identity. I emerged 4 years later as a homeless widow.

Here is a brief list of lessons I learned in Abilene, a place I never imagined living:

1) My life is “standing on the scaffolding” always waiting for the elusive “final, settled” house to be built. I now know it is heaven that I am imagining.
2) I met an “Angel in the Alley” who ministered to my yard and my pool…and my soul after Bill died.
3) Life is “not about you”.
4) You always worry about the wrong things.
5) I had a great experience getting to know the family of God.
6) “Lord, why didn’t you just email the plan? Why did I have to go through all of this?
7) My life has been a smorgasbord of preparation…why so many interruptions between servings?
8) Best advice: “Just do the next thing.”
9) All my needs were met…….but in His time.
10) It was all beyond my imagination.
11) I love the blessing of fur……….I want to be a Noah in Heaven.
12) “Lord, You want me to do WHAT!”
13) I told you Lord I was willing to die but you wanted me to live and follow your mission.
14) What if I had told you “no!”? I certainly would have missed the blessing.
15) Knowing that things will fall into place after you surrender bears no correlation to a hurry towards surrender.
16) I experienced “addition by subtraction”.
17) I began to understand “lost and found” and that the “found” sometimes transcends the “lost” in ways you would never guess.
18) Stuff does not matter.