It’s quiet, the children are all still sleeping, and I’m enjoying a nice cup of tea while staring out at the lake. I’ve been thinking about how over the last few months nothing has gone the way I planned for it to. I’m thinking what we would have missed out on if the truck had shipped to Florida and we had headed north from there way back in May like I’d wanted to do.
I had a heart to heart with my brother before we left Texas and it got me thinking about some things. We’ve all got selfish tendencies, haven’t we? For me, this trip has been primarily about things I want to do and things I want my kids to do. I have included some of the things the kids want to do too, like in a few days, we’re going to check out the World’s Museum of Coca-Cola. Sounds super cool, right?
You know what I didn’t consider though when making plans for this trip is whether other people might want to see the kids and I. Well, that’s not exactly true. There are several people who I have let know we’re going to be in their area and asked if they’d like to get together or meet up. But, there’s also specific people I made no attempt at seeing because I’ve got some deep-rooted bitterness in my heart.
Yep, this is going to be one of those deep, soul-searching emotional posts. It took God severely messing with my plans for me to really examine my motives. See, I had no intention whatsoever of seeing my parents this trip. It did not even cross my mind once, to make the effort to see them. Well, that’s not entirely true, it crossed my mind before we even left England, but after having one parent say we couldn’t stay with them and knowing the other one didn’t even have their own place; I crossed the idea of visiting Texas, where they both live, off my list completely. And since my brother, who is the only person I even wanted to see in Texas, offered to come see us in Florida; the choice to not visit Texas was made even simpler.
If you’ve read any of my posts though, you know we ended up in Texas, right? The state where both my parents live. Well, isn’t that just a kick in the chest. Not only that, but we ended up at my Dad’s place. The same place I was told we couldn’t stay before we left England. I could say a fat-ton more about that awkward situation, but let’s just move onto the fact our Defender was overheating after we picked it up from the port and since it’s a British vehicle I wanted to take it to a garage who specializes in Land Rovers.
Guess where the only specialty shop in northeast Texas is? Dallas. A 45-minute drive away from where my mom lives. I still couldn’t stay with her seeing as she doesn’t have her own place, but I couldn’t exactly be 45 minutes away and not visit either. Well, I suppose I could have, but she lives with my brother and I did want to see him, so not really a choice there.
You might be wondering why wouldn’t I want to visit my parents? It goes back to that bitterness I mentioned earlier. See, in the last fifteen years, know how many times my parents have visited me? My mom – zero; my dad – I can only think of three. I’m including my wedding, the birth of my four babies, holidays, and every other special occasion. Over 15 years of my life and this
is the amount of effort they have put into coming to see me and their grandchildren. You know what’s even worse? The number of phone calls, Facetime, etc. initiated by them during that same time is about the same. Heartbreaking, huh?
I could say more about driving 10 hours with infants multiple times to visit and offering to buy plane tickets for them to visit us and the repeated broken promises about trips to see us in England, but I’m just going to leave it by saying my relationship with my parents has been almost exclusively one-sided since I left home.
I think I was around twenty years old when I had the realization my relationship with my them was definitively a one-way street, and that it didn’t have to be. I didn’t have to be the one to make all the effort to continue our relationship while they made next to none. I had been visiting a friend when his mom called him just to say hi, to see how he was doing, to make sure he’d been taking care of himself. He got off the phone and mentioned she calls him 2-3 times every single week to do this. I remember thinking, “Wow! Parents actually do that?”
So, I stopped calling them every week, waiting and hoping they would call me instead. I stopped saving up all my money to fly home every Christmas, waiting and hoping they might come visit me instead. Needless to say, I’m still waiting and hoping.
Hence, my lack of desire to go out of my way and travel to Texas; my unwillingness to drive 18 hours out of my way to see them. But God has a way of leaving us no options sometimes except to do what we don’t really want to do. Thus, how I ended up in Texas spending time with my parents anyways. It wasn’t necessarily bad, though it was somewhat uncomfortable and extremely evident four kids can be too much for grandparents who are used to barely one. My children enjoyed the time though and will now have a few cherished memories of their grandparents they didn’t have before. Even my mom is still raving about how much she enjoyed seeing them and spending time with them.
And me? Well, I’m still slightly annoyed my plans went so awry, but glad my parents and children enjoyed themselves. It’s doubtful I’ll make another trip to Texas anytime soon especially since my brother is moving to Iowa, but who knows. If there’s anything I’ve learned through all this, it’s not to expect my plans to go completely to plan.