When I was twelve we moved from New Hampshire to California, leaving behind, for the second time, all of my extended familiy. It would be 10 years before I would see any of them again. Perhaps this is the reason I identify with the pioneer women in the stories that fill my shelves. I understand that ability to put down roots quickly, to establish a community of friends. That desire to be known, to tell my story, the reason I blog.
My mom called these years her desert years. For someone who grew up surrounded by the green hills of New England, the southern California landscape was harsh and inhospitable. Everything in El Cajon appeared in shades of tan—the rocks, the dusty hills, the stucco on our houses. It wasn't until I returned for a business trip last year that I realized just how dusty and "western frontier town" it felt. My mom was used to the stately brick colonials of Concord or modest saltboxes and cape cods which have the dignity of age and design, surrounded by woods that might have seen Paul Revere or Louisa May Alcott. When we moved to Michigan at the end of our California sojourn and began to drive through Missouri and Illinois, she had an intense reaction to the tall, green hardwoods of the midwest. Mom was quiet, but I can still hear her almost breathless excitement as she murmured over and over, "Trees, tall green trees." She grew to appreciate the unique beauty that is the southwest and loved the wilderness spaces we visited in the Sierras and the Mojave desert. But the New England landscape was as much a part of her as the Boston accent that came out when she was tired or stressed.
She often spoke of this time as a desert experience in her spiritual life also. Although a Christian since a young age, her renewed commitment to follw him was only six years old at the time. During those years we had attended first a Baptist church, where the Bible was preached, although inerrancy wasn't always a top priority. Upon our move to Florida, we joined a nondenominational, sort-of-Assemblies-of-God congregration that also ran the Christian school where my dad taught. The pastor was British and believed in preaching through a book of the Bible, verse by verse. For both my parents, that time was a feast, from milk to meat, as a newborn thrives on milk and then quickly grows into solid food. God used that time to establish and build our family faith, and provide the direction for my father's future vocation. While in California, we switched churches as often as we switched houses (8 times in 7 years), each time searching for one that would preach the God's Word, reach out to us outsiders, and train its youth properly—since I was entering those formative years. (I remember one church that we visited only briefly—stopping when my father saw two teens sitting too cozily right in front of the pastor's wife). Toward the end of our California time, we didn't often make it to church, spending our Sundays at the swap meet, selling what we could to pay off the debt and allow my father to maintain some independence and dignity.
I've retold this story so many times, and yet, looking back today, I realize that my mom's faith was not dry and dusty during those years. God had given her a wellspring, faith deep within, to nourish and water her faith during troubled times. She drew on that faith over and over – as she desperately missed her family, feeling helpless as they experienced divorce, death, and other life changes without her there as the big sister to comfort and help – as she watched my father strive and fail to complete a masters degree – and then strive and fail to start a business he felt would succeed. And she passed that faith on to me, as I watched her leaning on Christ to sustain her and secure her when there was no money for rent and no food. She held tight to the promise that all things work together for good. She declared without wavering that God was good, even when she didn't understand why things were not working out for us. She found her own sources of nourishment, in the praise and worship tapes that played constantly-to the point that certain songs still bring memories of long car rides to the Sierras or quick errands to Vons Grocery and the thrift store. She read Christian fiction, primarily historical, drawing out what was good and enjoying the escape from the hard realities of life. And she held tight to friends God provided, who encouraged her. All these allowed her faith to remain strong, flourishing in all seasons.
