I Went Home. Sort of.

Last week, we made the impossible trip. 

When we left Dallas almost 9 years ago, I was glad.  9/11 had just happened and I was nervous about living in such a big city.  We were on our way to East Texas with our first child who was 3 months old.  Toward the end of our one year in East Texas, we planned on going back to Dallas to start a church with one of my husband's friends.  We temporarily moved in with my inlaws for what we thought would be 2 months until we could go back to Dallas.  During those 2 months, we made a couple of trips back to Big D.

And then we realized that we should not be part of that church plant.  The circumstances changed and we bowed out.  So then we were stuck in Louisiana with no job for my husband and I was pregnant with our second child.

The thought of Dallas was the thought of home.  I missed it like a child misses her mother.  I still can't even tell you why that place had such a place in my heart.  Perhaps it was because I lived there until I was 7 and had fond memories of it, or because it was where I married my sweetheart, or miscarried our first baby, or where I gave birth to our oldest son.  Maybe it was the friends we had, maybe it was the materialism and the lights.  Maybe it was the wide open sky view that wasn't obstructed by those stupidly tall pine trees that grew in East Texas.  Dallas was in my blood.  I wanted to go back.

I didn't go back for 8 years. 

When we hit north Texas last week, driving in on I-30, it was wonderful.  The sky was full of clouds, but it was a huge sky, nevertheless.  We got to our friends' home, ate dinner with them, and while they went to bed, we went driving.  We drove for a good 2 hours that night, after being in the car for 9 hours that day.  We went downtown and saw just how much it had grown.  We saw First Dallas, where my husband was on staff for a short while and looked at the new building.  We enjoyed I-75 because it's got to be one of the prettiest interstates in the country between downtown and 635 going north.

The next day, we loaded up and went to see our last apartment before we moved away.  We got to see friends unexpectedly.  And then we went to see it.  The place where I was conceived.  It wasn't the home my parents lived it.  It was a University.

I cried from the time I saw it until we drove away.  My dear husband pulled over in the middle of the campus and prayed for me as tears streamed down my cheeks.  I looked at the sidewalks and the doors and windows and wondered where he walked and what windows he looked out of.  I wondered where his classes were.  I wonder if he parked his car where we were parked. 

It was a weak connection to the man who sold his sperm to help create me, but it was all I had.