“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.” – Bill Keane (creator of comic The Family Circus)

If you were to have asked me in my youth where I would one day call home, it would never have been Houston. I’m from San Antonio, went to college in Waco married a girl from Dallas. We lived and worked up there for a number of years. Then, that call came from way down south.

The other day I realized that I had spent the better part of my adult life living in Houston. So hard to believe. I never would have predicted that turn in the road. Once we were ready to find a little Baptist university, the first place and only place that called was in Houston. The one university where I never sent an application. Who wants to work in Houston? But those years were the best of times and then at the very end, the worst (Dickens).

We were there for almost thirty years. Our daughter was educated in the public schools of Fort Bend ISD. She and her husband met at a middle school church camp. The rest was history. My wife continued her own education, earning both her graduate degrees in Houston. Her career and calling took off and she achieved incredible accomplishments – some while fighting off a brain tumor.

“There is nothing like a dream to create the future.” ― Victor Hugo

While living in Houston and not in a small town (where Baptist colleges are typically located) we had access to the best medical care in the world. That wasn’t important to us when we moved down, bought our house and started new careers. Then at the end, cancer came. Living in Houston was the best move we could have ever made! Despite the gruesome nature of chemotherapy, surgery, rehabilitations and radiation treatments; all the interactions with doctors, nurses and healthcare professionals was a blessing beyond words. The technology, treatments and innovation were options for my wife because we were living in Houston (and not Brownwood).

Our church family was essential for survival during all the ups and downs during those decades. Real people who were there when our daughter left for college and later was married. They were our family when we fought cancer and then grieved my wife’s death. The suffering that followed was bearable only because I had the constant connection with all these people who put their love into practice. I constantly ask myself, sometimes out loud, how do people make it through life without a church family?

I learned so much during my years in Houston. Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen as you travel from your 30’s to 60’s? I think I just got a passing grade. As I reflect, I grew mostly because of the relationships with mentors, peers and students over those many years. These were experiences that I could never have planned or predicted. Those are always the best kind, even when filled with some crashing and burning.

“It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being.” ― John Joseph Powell

Friends helped to enrich our lives with their time, unforgettable adventures and faithful presence. Houston wasn’t just a city with major sports teams, theaters, global cuisine, touring concerts, and beaches to the south. It was all of that, but really it was filled with relationships. All those rock concerts, BBQ’s in the backyard and enchilada lunches made Houston the right place for us with the right people at just the right time in our journey. How could I have planned all of these wonderful friends sailing into our lives during the twists and turns that came long?

“If you wait until you feel ready, you will always be too late.” ― Craig Groeschel

Dallas, this is where we lived before coming to Houston. It’s a place with a schizophrenic highway system, not logically organized like San Antonio or Houston. My first weeks on the roads up here have been spent trying to not end up in Ft. Worth. A lot of U-turns and listening to digital guides (who aren’t all looking at the same map!). Each highway gets a new name every fifteen miles or so. Sometimes you get a road sign, sometimes not. All a great throw of the dice. So far, I have found my way back home each day/evening. When I see that big landfill on the horizon, I know I’m near and the stress starts to fade.

When I wake up and carefully look, I can see God’s providence and presence during those years in Houston. There was so much to learn. We’re never as grown up as we think we are. We/I had terrible turns in life during the last half of my time there. Those awful experiences also brought deep blessings. There’s a song, God Walks the Dark Hills, that’s how I lived the last half of my time in Houston. Now that I’m in this next chapter, and looking backward, I’m relieved that all of this happened while living down there. The right friends were ready to catch me each time I fell. I’m now certain, there was no better place to be.

“My focus is not on the flood that surrounds me. Rather, my focus is on the God Who surrounds the flood.” ― Craig D. Lounsbrough