Hannah the hot momma

600 miles from the nearest family, without a job and steady income, and two little boys that were obviously exhibiting signs that something was really wrong was where we found ourselves five years ago. Hannah was still working as a server in a local restaurant and had been adopted as the resident mother figure even though she was only 23 years old (not that she ever looked a day over 21). I was building some furniture for a local consignment shop and doing odd jobs for families within our church. Caleb was pooping in his dresser drawer. Andrew and Joel were pooping on everything they could reach and some things they couldn’t.

Hannah just has one of those personalities that make you want to be around them. She’s happy (most of the time) and it’s contagious. She’s a pretty little blonde girl with a funny indiscernible accent and a slightly off sense of humor. All those things work together to make a mighty potent waitress package. Fortunately we are no longer in a place where we need a second income, but if we did, I’d send her back to work as a server in a heartbeat (I would do it, but for some reason my personality doesn’t lend itself well to the service industry… I don’t know why… probably because they’re all dummies). It was great hearing all the stories she came home with every night about the weird customer or unstable coworker. There was the rather large gentleman who ordered a pitcher of margarita and then explained that he needed it to cope with the pain from his gout as he very awkwardly placed his foot on the table for dramatic effect. There was the time her manager decided it would be a good idea to reach in the hot oil after something he had dropped and burned most of the flesh off his hand. There was all the joking and jesting about the innocent little preachers wife and everyone’s efforts to embarrass her (most of which were successful). She was also the go-to person for personal problems and counseling. Every employee there (that spoke English) looked to her for guidance and approval. The ones who didn’t speak English just hit on her and asked in broken English for her to run away with them. She was offered a position as a manager with promise of $70,000-$80,000 a year, right along with 80-120 hours a week worth of work. As tempting as the money might have been, we felt very strongly that it was my responsibility to be the primary provider for our family, even if that meant skipping a meal now and then.

I’m not sure what it was about the area we were in, but I could not find sufficient work to pay our bills. I was accustomed to making $25-$30 an hour in MO for carpentry work, but in TN no one would consider me for more than $15. Most people wanted to pay no more than $10/hr. As much as I believed my work was worth much more than that, I wasn’t about to let pride keep food off of our table so I did whatever I had to do to make a buck here and there (well, not whatever, but you get the idea). I felled trees after storms, laid flooring, I remodeled rooms, and I kept building furniture hoping it would take off. It didn’t. We were quickly running out of money and hope.

We spent weeks praying and knew that we needed to move closer to one of our families, but we didn’t really know which. What it finally came down to was that we had offers of help with the boys and work waiting on me at $50/hr back in TX and a whole lot of friends in MO. A friend of mine from where I grew up (TX) had put me in touch with a pastor in the area who was looking for a youth minister. After a few emails back and forth we finally found our way to a phone call. It was pretty standard. We talked through history and experience and briefly touched on each other’s philosophy of ministry and then the conversation kind of lulled and I assumed it was drawing to a close. Finally, the pastor asked my opinion about a certain theological topic and I shared my beliefs and the conversation turned sharply from obligated politeness to genuine interest. We talked over an hour more about some deep theology and personal conviction and found ourselves to be on the same page on every issue, a very rare occasion to tell the truth. We finished the conversation and shared a few more emails and phone calls back and forth before the process stalled. A little birdie told me that some in the church were hesitant to pay our moving expenses from TN to TX, so after some prayer Hannah and I decided to just take the excuse away from them and move back to my home town.

We spent a few weeks tying up loose ends and packing boxes in our rented house. I repaired the green velvet wallpaper that Caleb had carefully torn to shreds from the staircase and hoped our landlord would give us our deposit back since it was part of what we hoped to pay the rental fee for the moving truck with. Fortunately she was pleased with what she saw and on May 6^th, 2006 11 months to the day from our arrival, we pulled out of town headed for MO. Yeah, we moved to TX through St. Louis. Some friends of ours were getting married and asked us to photograph the wedding. We drove 10 hrs, slept, spent all day taking pictures, slept again, and drove 12 hrs. That was a great week; exhausted, hundreds of dollars in gas, breaking furniture getting it in and out of the truck. We pulled in late one evening, Hannah and I crawled inside my parent’s house and we released the Tate tornados to tear up everything in sight. I’m pretty sure they were now regretting their offer to help us with them…