Last week, Liz and I finally got married along the beaches of Crescent City, California. My dad called it the best wedding ever. Probably because the whole thing lasted 13 minutes with the photos taking only 15 more minutes. I was glad that the anticipation was over, at least for one hurdle.
The second hurdle was finding out where we should live. We’d decided earlier on to ditch the idea of moving up the coast so that Liz could go to a nice school and get her edu’macation. Seattle, Nashville, L.A., Atlanta…all with good job prospects where I could work and she could go to school. Then, of course, there was also coincidentally Abilene, which has two colleges that offer her particular major.
I have mixed feelings about Abilene. On one hand, Abilene is a nice town where we could settle down and enjoy a nice life together. On the other hand, it would be nice to explore somewhere new. I find myself asking, “Is God directing us through events and circumstances to go to Abilene, or am I directing us there through my own whims?”
Unfortunately, it was coming down to simple economics. Seattle seemed nice but too expensive, and if we thought Sacramento traffic and smog was bad, Los Angeles is…well, you know. But I didn’t want to go back to Abilene. It seemed too demeaning, like a defeated man returning home when all else has failed. Yet, the main reason I’d be going is to get Liz through school so she can do what she wants to do. Even if she changed her mind, I couldn’t live with dragging her around and leaving her dreams unfulfilled.
Last night, we were looking at college websites on the Internet, and she checked out Hardin-Simmons. She wants to go there now, and Lord willing, we’ll live and move there sometime after our wedding reception in September.
So I guess after four years I’m returning to Abilene again. It still would have been neat to live in Seattle or Portland, the direction I was hoping for originally. But if she can go to a good school and work again finally, and we can both live in a nice town in the middle of nowhere, then I guess we can be thankful for that.