On June 4, 2008 it was exactly 6 years since we pulled our U-Haul up to 78 Highland Place in Brooklyn, NY.  We were so very green and it makes me laugh when I think about it.  We made sure someone was with the U-Haul at all times while it was parked out on the scary street in case of a daylight robbery.  When we arrived our apartment wasn't completely renovated like they had said it would be.  The hardwood flooring was nice but it was splattered with paint galore so we made a quick decision to install carpet.  Quick being the keyword here....we had carpet installed in the next couple of hours so we could move our belongings in so we could return the U-Haul on time so we wouldn't be charge a large sum of money for being late.  My sister Andrea and her husband Josh and my little brother Jon were our helpers.  I don't know how we would have done it without them.  Words can't even describe how I felt that day....of course there was a knot in my stomach and it didn't help that we ate at the local Wendy's that day and my bread had mold on it.  Some kind folks from church stopped by that afternoon and invited us over for desert that evening but I was feeling very sickly and nervous. Everyone went except for me, they also wanted to take showers.  Our shower was beyond gross.  I remember laying down somewhere in our apartment and crying and crying.  Everyone was a stranger except for the kind girl that invited us over for desert.  The city was such a different place than where I was from.  A small town  in Southern Indiana was where I had called home for 25 yrs.  I just wanted to go back there where everything was familiar and I had the security of family and my little niche.  I had left a job that I liked and had worked my way up to a managerial position.  I didn't have any kind of a job lined up when we moved here.  If I had it to do over I would have tried to get into a nursing program at a college somewhere.  Josh started at Brooklyn College soon after we moved and then started teaching school in the fall.  That summer consisted of me staying in the apartment all day because I was scared to go out  by myself.  One day I ventured out to do my laundry at the laundromat and of all days someone shot a gun right outside the laundromat door.  At first I didn't even think about  it but when I seen all the ladies at the laundromat  panic I remembered that I lived in the city and people aren't supposed to shoot guns.  I come from redneckville where gun shots are heard from shooting birds or clay pigeons etc....Anyway that put quite a lot of fear in me.  I thought for sure that was a daily happening around here after that episode. (I think we've only had 2 or 3 shooting right out here since we've lived on this street). I remember begging Josh to please move us back to Indiana but that wasn't his plan or God's.  I kept thinking in the back of my mind that if I can just stick this out for two years (the length of the Teaching Fellows Program) we are so outta here.  I'm packing the bags and moving back to Indiana.  Looking back I see what a control freak I was. (I still have those tendencies, God help me) Obviously, this was not an easy time, to put it mildly, for our marriage.  I think this was probably the first time in my life that something big and something that really mattered to me absolutely was not going the way I wanted it to.  AND I DID NOT LIKE IT.  Don't you think that happens to all us at some point in our lives?  At this point you either become bitter and hard OR you surrender yourself to God. I'm afraid I didn't surrender very easily....I fought for a long time.  Sometimes I still do.  People ask me, "So do you like the city better?"  In reality I don't like city life but I feel like I've come to accept that this is where God has called us for now.  We have good friends here and a church that we really like.  I feel a deep sadness sometimes that my children aren't growing up the way I did.  (A great big yard to play in, a woods to build teepee's in with a special cousin, a driveway to make little road's in, eating summer veggies out of the garden, etc...)  But on the flip side Jackson probably gets to go to the zoo and the aquarium much more than "country kids" get to.  The other week when we flew to South Carolina we were flying over the city here and he looked out the window and pointed out the Empire State Building and named it!  I couldn't have done that when I was three.  
Sometimes I wonder what lessons God is trying to teach me.  I am in the process of learning to take life as it comes.  There has been lots of change again in our lives recently....I honestly believe God gave me the grace to go through each day and trust in him.  Why do I have to make it so difficult sometimes?  I am so grateful for my husband, my children and my loving family that supports me.  My mom often gives me garden goodies that she toils over (corn, green beans etc...) my Dad looks for little country toys that he thinks Jackson might like.  They buy slip n slides so Jack n Jill can play in the water. 
Now I feel like I'm rambling....maybe there will be a part two to this someday.
Please pray for me ,
Tonya