May 7, 2001
CYBERCOLUMN:
Moving on...
___By Donna Van Cleve
___I wrote, "Love you!" and, "We miss you!" on the inside of the cardboard flaps before I taped the box shut and labeled the contents. In another box marked "kitchen," we slipped a plastic bag of red dirt from the backyard where three little boys played all of their lives.
___I kept finding myself unintentionally humming the tune from the country western song "There is No Arizona" while helping our music/youth minister and his wife pack for their move from South Texas to the land of the biggest canyon--Arizona.
DONNA VAN CLEVE
___Some friends took the family out to eat that Saturday evening, while a group of us began loading the 24-foot rented truck parked in the driveway. We had carried most of the big items from the living room when Christy walked in and started to cry.
___She had been packing all week, but the sight of that emptying room brought reality one step closer. We all hugged her, and I slapped a piece of tape on my dad's backside that said Fragile: This End Up in an attempt to get her laughing so we all wouldn't start bawling. Scott and Christy are excited about where the Lord is leading them, but it's still hard to leave family and friends, and it's hard for us to let them go.
___A small army of women worked in the house while a regiment of men packed the truck. That was an engineering feat to behold, using the expertise of a retired border patrolman, a retired electrical technician, a banker, a pastor, a physics teacher, a coach, Scott's dad and a couple of football players. You would not believe how much these men packed on that truck--"good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over comes to mind. We're just a little concerned about the safety of the people opening that roll-up door on the receiving end in Arizona. We've warned Christy, Scott and his parents to stand clear.
___The plan was to be on the road early Monday morning, and at 4 Monday afternoon, we finally hugged them goodbye. I told Christy we would continue to keep in touch using e-mail. I consider the Internet an electronic umbilical cord.
___I told Scott that it was going to be so hard breaking in a new music minister. I remember our first choir practice with Scott five and a half years ago. I was a little nervous, knowing my major limitations as a pianist. He led the choir in some particular song, and after they had sung a bit, he turned and asked me to play the next verse and sing.
___I almost fell off my piano bench. Oh dear, I thought. I can't even walk and chew gum at the same time, and our new choir director wants me to play the piano and sing at the same time?
___The look of shock on my face must have prompted him to ask me again, "Can you transpose?"
___Oh! What a relief! I had misunderstood him. He had simply asked if I could play the next verse in the key of "C," to which I replied, "No." The first request I thought he had made would have been hard for me--although I could stumble through trying to play and sing at the same time, but the idea of transposing? Absolutely impossible! No fat chance. Zip. Nada. Nyet.
___That was the first inkling Scott had of the challenge facing him as new music minister in a small town Baptist church. Oh, but could he get it out of us eventually. God used him to take a very small basket of talents and multiply it to bless this church and community for God's glory and honor. It wasn't anything to take on the road, but there were many moments that put goose bumps on our goose bumps.
___Scott and Christy are heading to a church that has a larger basket of talents with which to work, as well as many new opportunities for them. "He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much," Luke 16:10. Yes, it's sad for us to see them go, but we wouldn't want them to be anywhere except where God wants them to be. At the same time, we're so grateful god first sent them our way.
___And there really wasn't a South Texas armadillo in one of those boxes, even though we felt compelled to label it so. Like the little bag of soil, we just wanted a little bit of us to go with them, too.
___ Donna Van Cleve is director of the public library in Cotulla, a writer, wife, mother and member of First Baptist Church in Cotulla, where she is pianist.
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