I left for work on Monday, heading to Alpine on a train. Tuesday, the phone rang at 3 am for me to catch a train back home. Amanda and I had chatted a bit once I was off, and I dropped the ‘let’s drive all the way in one day’ on her. Our original plan was that we’d leave and stay halfway at my aunt’s. I could only stay until Sunday at the latest, so I suggested we do it all in one day to have a little more time together in Nashville rather than on the road. She was apprehensive, though I could tell she was considering it.
I hit the ground running as soon as I was back in town Tuesday afternoon. I needed to pack, but first I worked on the house a bit. Then I got a few maintenance things on the Yukon done before we rolled out to Nashville the next day. I wanted the car in good shape for the long haul, but also because Amanda will be driving it while I’m gone. It was early evening when I started working on the car. I had an issue and needed to go back to Del Rio to have it checked. Everything checked out, but I needed to swap out a part, which I thought might be the culprit. I grabbed the part and headed back. It was a mess from then on. I ended up dropping the new part behind the water pump. After a few burns and too long, I never could get it out! The old part seemed to be ok, so I just left the new one stuck and put the old one back in, wrapped up a few other maintenance items, and prayed we’d not have any issues on the long trip. So not only was it a busy evening, it was a frustrating one.
By this time, Amanda had already agreed to the drive all in one day terms. She was busy as well. Once home from dialysis, she went straight to the church to finish a few things up before we left. After the car debacle, I went to the church to help Amanda real quick on my way to grab Tank’s car bed setup out of storage for the trip back. I returned home to get packed and get a little sleep before we left. Amanda stayed at church until almost 10 pm! I loaded the car with what I could when Amanda returned and got to bed late. I’m not sure when she went to sleep, but at midnight, I was tossing and turning, and she was still up packing.
I wanted to leave at 4 am. That is the magic number for us, usually. If we leave at 4, we can typically be in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, before sundown. Oh, how I wish that were our destination instead of Nashville, where I am going to leave Amanda solo before returning alone. We settled on leaving at 5 am, but I told Amanda it had to be a firm 5, not later. Much to my dismay, we left about 30 minutes after our scheduled 5 am departure.
Amanda was head bobbing early on and wanted some StarBs early, but I convinced her to bed down for a bit. As she slept on and off, I pushed hard before we made our first stop, which ended up in Temple, about four hours from home. The combination of a Buc-ee’s and a StraBs there is the one-two punch for us! We only made a couple more stops, one just before leaving Texas for lunch and at HteaO to get a gallon of our favorite flavored tea, then in Memphis for gas and dinner. Amanda was done with the ride about 10 hours in! Once we were closer, I was calling out towns like we were on a drive home from San Antonio, saying we were leaving so-and-so town to show how close we were to getting to the apartment! We rolled in 15 and a half hours and 1100 miles after we’d left home.
It was a weird feeling when we got to the apartment; it felt more like home than our real home. Not a bad feeling, just an odd one. Everything is in its place, and it is nice and clean here. Our house is much the opposite, since it is a full-blown construction zone and is dirty. It has been under remodel since we moved in years ago. It just seems more peaceful, more simple here, I don’t have a list of things that need to be done at the apartment.
Once we arrived at the apartment, we opened the door, not knowing what to expect. I’d meant to have someone check on it after the snowstorm, but didn’t. It was fine, and we didn’t have any issues. While Amanda was getting Tank settled, I unloaded the Yukon, which took a while. Amanda was still trying to sort things out while I got into bed. After back-to-back early wake-ups and two long days, I was done.
We all slept in pretty late, with no plans to leave the apartment. Amanda had put a grocery delivery order in that arrived in the morning, we needed a few things to get us through the day. She got a call and was having some issues with dialysis scheduling, reverting back to the Nashville center. The centers seemed not to know what the other was doing, and no one was listening to Amanda. She ended up not going back to her regular Nashville schedule and stayed on the Texas Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday schedule. There was a miscommunication between centers that led them to think she was dialyzed on Wednesday, so she would be a day behind. Now, she’ll do dialysis on Friday and Saturday. She was not happy to have to do both days back-to-back.
We proceeded to do nothing the rest of the day. As busy as we’ve been, it was nice to have an off day to decompress, especially after a long trip. It was much better to drive it all in one day and have a day off, rather than drive it over two days and hop right into things once we got here. While Amanda is in dialysis tomorrow, I will work on my Suburban and get it ready for the drive. I needed it in tiptop shape since I’ll be driving back and forth a lot. The first Monday of March, Amanda will start the home dialysis, so I’m planning on driving back up about a week after I leave. Yes, flying would be better, but the cost of a last-minute flight can be a bit high. Like when I wanted to come back early in December, it wasn’t even cost-effective to swap my existing flight then. My railroad schedule, if you can call it that, isn’t easy to work around.
We have plans to hit some farmers markets on Saturday at least, but otherwise we plan to lay low. I hope I can make it to service on Sunday to see everyone, but depending on work, I may have to leave before then. My tentative plan is to be Texas-bound after church on Sunday. It’s 50/50 whether I’ll be driving all night or stopping at my aunt’s; we shall see.
Amanda has a few things, but her schedule isn’t packed here yet. We had a talk about whether to call the kidney team right away or wait. I’m team wait, I want to give the Lord ample time to pull off a miracle. Also, maybe to give the home dialysis time to do its thing. They say it is easier on the body; maybe it would be better for the kidneys. I don’t know, I just want to give plenty of time before we pull the trigger on another organ transplant. It’s not like she’s going to get listed and a call comes in immediately, but it could happen. Amanda is team flip-the-switch; she’s ready to be done with all of this—a very understandable stance. Before any switch is flipped or any button pushed, there was once a caveat: Amanda needed some specific labs for blood donor cross-matching first. If we get said labs before 1 pm tomorrow, she can be listed by the evening.
Amanda hasn’t said anything, but the longer the wait, the longer she has to be up here alone. We haven’t talked about that much, but we did before we left Nashville a month ago. We know this will not be easy. We are about to enter a phase of real strain for both of us. It was terribly hard for me when I returned home alone to an empty house last time. Amanda had a hard time here, but had friends with her. This will be extremely hard for her to stay here alone, now. We were apart when I was working in Iowa, but she was at home with her work and all her church family and friends, and I was working so much I barely had time to breathe. Needless to say, this is about to be a tough time, and being apart isn’t going to make it any easier; it’s only going to compound the difficulty.
We are ready and prepared for whatever God has planned for us. Whether a miraculous healing, which we haven’t stopped praying for, or the miracle of a healing via a kidney transplant. I was catching up on sermons from our Nashville church the other day. Tim, the interim pastor, while preaching on the signs and wonders, specifically Jesus walking on water, said, “Sometimes faith leads us into uncertainty, and not out of it; sometimes following Jesus leads us into storms.” We’re in a storm now, though the rough, crashing waves may have subsided a bit; I can see another storm on the horizon. Jesus will see us through it, though.
Sometimes faith is continuing to row even when you are exhausted. Our arms are pretty weak from rowing, now. Though busy and physically exhausting, our time in Texas helped revive us in the midst of this storm. We are ready to weather the next, no matter what it has in store. Not because we are strong, but because the One we put our faith in is, and He’ll see us through to the other side.
A quick side note, there are two miracles in the story of Jesus walking on the water in John, the second is often overlooked. Once Jesus was in the boat, it was immediately taken to the other side, while they were still a few miles from shore. Are you picking up what I’m putting down? Once Jesus is on board, He addresses the problem and delivers you to where you need to be.
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