For the first time in thirteen years, I don’t have a suitcase packed. After two years with the American Red Cross, two years with the 2010 Census, seven years with the Churches of Christ Disaster Relief Effort and almost two years with the 2020 Census. I have traveled a lot. Yesterday Lori told me that our daughter Tabitha was planning on going on a trip and needed to borrow a suitcase. She had gotten out the new camo colored Columbia suitcase I had bought for us to travel to Europe with. I bought it over a year ago and there it was in our living room, still shiny and new with the tags still on it. I told Lori that I didn’t want it to get all scratched up. So I got out my trusted companion of a suitcase and proceeded to clean it out completely for the first time in thirteen years.
Friday will be my last day as a Partnership Specialist with the 2020 Census and retirement is a distinct possibility, although I am still open to going where the Lord leads me. In truth, I posted a picture of my empty suitcase on Facebook and said I was contemplating retiring and I immediately got a response from a dear friend with The Churches of Christ Disaster Response team saying they would love for me to volunteer with their organization. They are terrific. they do the heavy lifting after disasters: rebuilding houses, cutting trees, clearing debris and serving meals. Most of their volunteers sleep on Church classroom floors on air mattresses. They recently put a need on Facebook for a huge generator to use in Louisiana where they are working without electricity and almost immediately, they got a `100 KV generator on a trailer donated. Christians have loved helping people suffering from disasters ever since the Church at Antioch in the First Century described in Acts 11.
I told my friend that I had seriously been considering volunteering with them but asked for a little time. I explained that for our 42nd Anniversary/retirement present we bought a big brush chipper attachment for our tractor and a really nice chainsaw to start clearing the underbrush along Mustang Creek at our pecan orchard here in Forney. (I know that a big part of Lori’s master plan is to keep me busy and fit.)
Though it is a retirement project, Saturday we got a little head start. Of course, she knows that once I start a project, even a huge one like clearing trees and underbrush, I’m too OCD to leave it alone. Saturday, we hired two young men to help us that we have known since they were babes.
The four of us with my new chainsaw and two pole saws hacked through thick thorny gnarls of smilax vines (mother-in-law’s tongue), saplings, ancient fence posts and trees. Slowly but surely, we cleared land along the creek that nobody had set foot on in at least half a century. Now that it is cooler, I plan to continue reclaiming the beautiful land along our creek, leaving only the prettiest of trees. After Friday I had planned to make that my full-time, (scratch that) my part-time job.
My sweet wife knows me better than anybody. She knows the prospect of retirement is a little daunting and that I need something to do. After I have made a little progress, I plan to volunteer doing disaster relief work again after I get some land cleared.
There is a quote by Tim Tebow that was is originally attributed to Ralph Abernathy that is so true for me. “I don’t know what the future holds, but I know who holds my future.”
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