“The bones of five plus Texas generations on all sides of my family are clacking in their graves! We are moving to Tennessee!”
My grandparents have been thinking on this move for a while. As we all get older and are able to visit the lake house less and less, my grandparents find more and more reason to be in Tennessee near my own parents, aunts, and uncles. But it will be a hard move. Texas pride runs deep. It’s hard to let go of. I was born in Texas and only lived there two years of my life but I still cling to it as my homeland. Because once a Texan, always a Texan.
Not only will they be moving from our homeland of Texas, but they will be moving from the land owned by their ancestors. The place where we bonded and played as children. A place treasured by our family. They will be leaving behind the place where our family was built.
A place where we built our dreams.
As I went through my Andmama’s email, I couldn’t help but focus on this paragraph,
Gene and I are children of ranchers, preachers, storekeepers, farmers and teachers. We have never lived more than two hours from the place where we were born. The concept of place is very important to me and my memories are all connected to this place in Texas. In times of stress in the big city, I would come back to the small central Texas town to think through the problems of my life. My father would laugh at my problem, making me realize that life could get worse! Our parents instilled in us the value of hard work and education. We are two country kids who went one hour away to college, married young, left the sand hills of central Texas and simply put one foot in front of the other to make our way in the world. We encouraged our children to work hard and to make a difference in their world.
Reading this over and over again, I can’t help but say –
Thank God for the dreamers.
Thank God for the Texas Ranchers and Arkansas Farmers who taught their children the value of a hard day’s work and the beauty of doing it yourself. For the professors, bankers, and police officers who taught their children a deep love of music. Who let their children leap into a world of unknowns and broken hearts. Thank God for the musicians and teachers who showed me the good, bad, and ugly of following hard dreams. Who pushed me across the world to meet thousands of dreamers as I went. Who, when I said ‘There is no way I’m moving to Alabama to write, I’m staying in Tennessee and becoming a musician’ said “No! God has a better dream for you and it’s in Alabama putting words to paper.”
Thank God for the dreamers around me.
Thank God for the preachers in my family who dreamed of a God who was filled with grace and joy for us all. Who read a holy book filled with stories of obedient dreamers and instilled that dream into the hearts of their children.
Thank you God, for being the ultimate dreamer! For reaching into the depths of the dirt and clay and forming us with your very breath. For saying to us, ‘Walk with me in my world of dreams.’ For weeping for us as we shattered those dreams with our sin. For working with us to rebuild what we lost.
Thank you, God, for sending an angel to a young obedient girl to say, ‘Don’t be afraid! God has a dream and he wants you to be a part of it!” For giving her strength as her tiny savior held her finger in his fist amongst the whispers of “whore” and “sinner”. Thank you for helping her hold on to the dream of the day when that tiny, beautiful hand, desperately clasping her finger, would powerfully grip the depths of our sin and free us from death and separation from You.
Thank you for inspiring the greatest dreams and filling your dreamers with the joy and obedience to follow them.
As my grandparents follow a new dream to Tennessee, as I follow my dreams in Alabama, as my heart is being held by the greatest dreamer of all,
I say thank God for the dreamers.