To Old Friends...And To New Ones

For my dear old friends who always provide excellent service in welcoming the traveling Ark, and for those dear friends I've not yet met...this repost is for you.

There was nothing good about the afternoon of my first teaching job as a newly married woman. I imagine the same holds true for my dear husband. The last thing I suspect a new husband wants to do is saunter home from work where your wife has been creating---or at least attempting to create(we won't even MENTION Mexican Chicken Suprise or the healthy cake sans eggs) as a warm and cheery homestead and tell her that plans have changed.

Instead of three years in Georgia, you've now got a three-year all US Army expense paid tour of Deutschland. Good-bye new job. Good-bye first home. Good-bye family and friends (who this bride cried about leaving when we married and left the Northeast for points unknown aka-the South). But the Army wasn't interested in my opinion, as I would soon find out.

Although I suspect the thwack with the saber on my rear end with the accompanying, "Welcome to the Army, Mrs. Marcoux!" should have clued me in.

At the very least, I guess I can't say they didn't warn me.

So, off we went to live our first three married years across the pond. It was one of my first experiences with seeing first hand how God provides:

You miss your friends? Here are 10 other ladies who miss theirs, too. And I'd bet that you've got a few more things in common besides.

You miss your work? Here's an assignment, the first of many, that will challenge anything you ever learned in school. It'll take nine months before the position opens, but that'll give you time to sharpen your skills. And if you're smart-SLEEP!

You miss the holidays back home? You won't believe the Christkindlmarkts here, and those fireworks you thought were the blitzkrieg? Why that's New Year's...right outside your bedroom window.

You think the food is strange? One word-schokolade.

Worried about being alone for birthdays, celebrations, baptisms, deployments, etc...Here's where I do my best work. You see, I am about to place in your life people that will lift you up and allow you to do the same through all of that and more. You will look back on the time you spent here when your three years are up; and wonder, how it could all be over so soon. Of course, you'll be happy to land on terra firma in the USA again, but nowhere (and trust me, I know) will ever be like the place where you became a family.

And years later, after spending a brief, but wonderful evening reconnecting with some of those same friends; and watching them pull their van (yes, the one you're dreaming about) out onto the road in the early dawn, you'll smile knowingly because you'll know that--once again--I was right.