Miles City, Montana is the major city serving most of Montana on the east side of Billings. There are only about 9,000 people here. There is a hospital, medical clinic, Albertsons and Wal-Mart. Life is quiet. You can ride your 4-wheeler as use for your main mode of transportation down main street if you wish. All of the houses were built in the early 1900's and nothing much else has been built since. Downtown is cool, it hosts the legendary "Olive Hotel". It was given its true 15 minutes of fame in the movie "Lonesome Dove". It is were old Gus gets shot in the story and then later dies from his wounds. Most of the residence are born and raised here and are descendents of the original settlers back in the 1850's. It appears that the musical artist Bob Dylan did some time at the Custer County High School under the name of Richard Zimmerman but though locals know that as fact, nothing in Dylan's information supports it. But that is OK because it is just another thing that makes this town interesting. Miles City is right on the Yellowstone River and the kids all float it in the summer. Though the history runs deep in this town it is best known for its World Famous Bucking Horse Sale held the third weekend in May every year. During this weekend the crowd grows from about 9,000 residents to about 20,000 people. This is where we come in.
Jeramie just recently became hired on by Burlington Northern Santa Fe railway with his assigned yard based in Forsyth, Montana and our move in date was the same weekend of this years sale. Might as well get thrown in and learn to swim. It did nothing but rain the first week we were here. To the point that every town around Billings and east was flooded out. Interesting but we take a different job in Montana only to arrive when FEMA inspectors arrive to assess flood damage. I guess we would have been here either way. We were offered testing in two places originally, Forsyth and Aberdeen, South Dakota. South Dakota did not appeal to the extended familial masses so Forsyth it was. Whenever my mother-in-law calls for the update, she lovingly refers to our new address as Miles Away City. It cracks me up because when she does come to visit she is going to find out just exactly how much truth there is to her banter. Forsyth is about 45 miles west of Miles City. Jeramie has started the 15 week Conductor Trainee program and will be a full conductor upon completion. He works for a freight line. Not a passenger line. he will not be taking train tickets from passengers. His job is more aptly described as Operations Manager of freight and coal trains. He will be in charge of ensuring the correct cars are attached in the correct order along with making sure the train leaves and follows a strict schedule as well as adhering to the laws of the rail and the game of traffic chess that is involved with multiple trains crawling all over the country-side. He manages all of this from the locomotive and travels with the train to its next yard and then hitches a ride home on another incoming train. It is him and an engineer. The engineer is in charge of the locomotive or engine only. The conductor is in charge of the train. They work together and the job cannot be done one without the other. They are separate jobs but it takes them both. So, no passengers on this rail only freight, coal and hazardous materials.
Rental housing in Miles City is hard to get your hands on. There are rental houses but when one comes back on the rental market it is usually re-rented within 12 hours. We are still in our RV which is totally fine with me. The RV has become our home so it is making the transition back into the "real world" a lot easier. Though we hope to be in a house by winter, we are not anxious to run right out and move into the first thing we see. To be honest, the thought of settling down and all that comes with that was a little suffocating at first. I have enjoyed the freedom we have had this last year on the road. But as we search out our new home state, the pressure of stationary living is starting to melt away.
We have been advised that the best way to approach housing is to forgo the rentals all together and buy but neither one of us is really super on board with that idea either. It seems the primary reason is that there are a few areas we could actually move to and we haven't even decided which town that will be. But deep down it is probably due to the fact that when we do, it becomes permanent. We are waiting patiently on the Lord to direct us.
I was having a bit of a hard time coming to to terms with parking the RV. I just couldn't believe that it would truly be over. But then we were informed that conductors for BNSF have the option of filling a position of traveling conductors. They call them mercenaries and they travel from yard to yard filling in where the yard is short handed on conductors for as long as one is needed and then moves on to another yard. That got me super excited. That got Jeramie super excited. Neither one of us was ready to plant roots so soon, however the down time in between the FEMA disaster work was driving Jeramie crazy with boredom. Maybe this was the work God had for us that would keep us more busy and still be mobile? Maybe this was the tool that would keep us immersed in multitudes of people. Maybe it doesn't have to end here. But, maybe not. Maybe we are suppose to settle right into small town rural Montana. We have no idea what lies ahead, only God. So for now we are perfectly content with still claiming our nomadic lifestyle and hanging in Miles City and keeping our options open. We might just be back on the road before we know it...or maybe not.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Honor your father and mother
Well, here I am, I do exist...
I was amazed at the length of time it has been since I last truly posted and I am a bit embarrassed but then I look back at why and remind myself "uh, when exactly were you suppose to do that?" I didn't turn on my computer for eight weeks...literally.
Lets first start with the bible verse Proverbs 27:1 "Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth".
Last we chatted Jeramie and I were excited to share our new plans for the spring and our time of furlough between disasters. They were good plans. They were evaluated, chosen and scheduled with ministry purely in mind. We were ready to move forward in a new direction after enjoying some warm Arizona sun. Then promptly after I posted it, we got the telephone call.
Exodus 20:12 "Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you".
My sister called to inform me that there had been some sort of accident on the farm and my mother was in the hospital. My mom is young, very active and rides horses as her work and career. My mother had broken her upper femur in four places. That is correct. Oddly broken from many angles in four places. The details of what happened were totally non-understandable but the details were not the issue. The issue was that she was going to need twenty-four hour care indefinitely and there is only one sibling who was truly capable of filling that roll. So, we kicked and screamed just a little because that's what you do when life redirects itself. I mean, we already had our spring planned out. I double checked and nope, sure enough, I did not have this even penciled in let alone written in pen on my calendar. But we were quickly reminded that our mission is to serve those who need and what good is it if we do not recognize family in need. It is not that we didn't want to help. We were just really excited to follow through with what WE had chosen. However, we prayed for direction in our service to people and we learned a long time ago that what you think the answer is suppose to look like is almost always not at all what God presents.
Before I got to be privy to the details of her case, we had to get from SE Arizona to NW Oregon. In the middle of the biggest rain/snow storm the west coast had seen in a long time. It took us four days. Ridiculous. We got laid over in Redding, California at the base of the Mt. Shasta because of road closures. While we were there our motorhome was tested for durability and we almost thought it wasn't going to make it. We finally had a break in the storm and we made a bolt for it. We arrived in Philomath, Oregon on March 20th.
Her leg was complicated enough that the orthopedic surgeons at the hospital did not feel qualified to handle her leg and there was talk of sending her two hours away in hopes of her being attended to by surgeons who may or may not have ever dealt with a case similar to hers. Two days of deliberation all the while my drugged up mother laid in the hospital, broken, giving everybody some of the best laughs they had had in a while. You would think the staff would tell the non-stoned family members present that the patient is on an I.V. drip of meds AND has access to a self managed button if she should need more. My sister made sure I knew that I had missed the best part because we arrived after her surgery and she was back home...off the I.V. Fortunately, she did not have to be transferred. A surgeon who had recently come back out of retirement decided he could tackle it as well as anybody. And he did. A rod through her hip, a rod down her femur, a couple of screws top and bottom and wrap it with some wire and we have a leg. The 24" suture that extended from hip to knee reminded me of closing the burlap bags full of wool that we use to have to jump in as kids during sheep shearing season to stuff as much wool in as possible before closing. Big black stitches that wrapped in and over creating a bulge of excess much like the top of a wool bag bursting at the seem.
The physical part of her healing process is on super fast recovery mode. The doctors were impressed by her progress. The original thought was no walking for at least six months maybe even a year with a goal of good use of the leg. Not full use but good use. Eight weeks later she was walking, almost full weight bearing with the use of aides, i.e. walker, cane etc. The emotional healing is a different kind of healing all together because though she will regain most use back in her leg, she may never gain back fully her active horsey lifestyle. Life will be different now and she doesn't know quite how it will be. That can be the most scary part of any recovery.
The details of her accident are very vivid in her mind and though she was in the presence of a horse, it was not a horse accident. It was a result of faulty body mechanics. Technically she has a degenerated knee that failed her and the mid-stride position her body was in was to much force for her upper leg to support when her knee gave out. So now she gets her knee replaced too.
Though I spent most of my time caring for my mom, I was able to get away some and experience the farm with my kids. I took them out and did what I did growing up there. Spring time is baby farm animal season and the farm is never without baby farm animals. It was crawling with kids (the goat kind not human), lambs and foals. The kids (my human kids, not goats) got to experience first hand God's plan for life and death all in the same instance.
One of the mares had difficulty foaling and while we were expecting a brand new vibrant baby horse the kids instead witnessed the death of the same foal before she was even born. The mare came into distress and the exam revealed a very dry, breech baby. Essentially a dead baby that could not be born. The mare was saved.
Earlier this spring there had been problems in the area with mountain lions. There had been sitings close to the farm and eventually one of them got a hold of some ewe's on the place. The wildlife and game control came and did a search and killed a monster cougar that had been dining on the sheep. He was six feet nose to tail. That's a big forest cat to find in your barn! But it was an awesome hands on, real life moment for my kids to see up close how God allows nature to work.
We were finishing up our plant science with a final project of collecting plant specimans. We couldn't have been in a better spot for that. There is everything in that science book, except cacti, right there on that farm. The valley was a great place to bring that kind of science to a closure.
Jeramie kept busy with farm work. During this time of family immersion it came to be on his heart to contemplate finding work that was more stationary. I faltered briefly this last winter with parking the RV but quickly came out of that funk. We still had ambitions of picking up our plans right where we would have been when we were done helping out my family. But lots of prayer brought us to a place of letting go of our itinerary. So we prayed that if God would have us settle down and plant again that it would nag both of us. We decided to start walking toward opportunities and keep walking as long as the doors were open.
The doors we walked towards were totally aligned by God. Jeramie is not one of these guys who has always wanted to be a ...(insert any profession here). He just started submitting resumes to companies who were advertising job descriptions that he thought he might enjoy. What we got was, from our perspective, completely random. He had doors open for Border Patrol, TSA as a US Air Marshall and from BNSF, a railway company that hauls freight. We moved toward them all and stopped with the first final offer that came, BNSF.
BNSF. Burlington Northern Santa Fe. They are the second biggest railway in the country with coverage in 28 states and 3 Canadian provinces. The position he was offered was in Forsyth, Montana. I had no idea where exactly that was but I get excited by the unknown so sounded good to me. Forsyth is in rural, Eastern Montana. In Rosebud county. The fourth largest county in Montana with a total population of 11,000 people. You read that right, 11,000 people in the COUNTY.
On May 18th, 2011 we moved to Miles City, Montana. For good...for now. But our journey is not over and since it is not over this is where I will leave you all and say good night. Until next time and I promise it will not be three months before you hear from me again, I hope to leave you hanging, wanting to hear more of our new chapter in life. The life that no matter how hard we try to plan never, ever turns out like we expect it to.
I was amazed at the length of time it has been since I last truly posted and I am a bit embarrassed but then I look back at why and remind myself "uh, when exactly were you suppose to do that?" I didn't turn on my computer for eight weeks...literally.
Lets first start with the bible verse Proverbs 27:1 "Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth".
Last we chatted Jeramie and I were excited to share our new plans for the spring and our time of furlough between disasters. They were good plans. They were evaluated, chosen and scheduled with ministry purely in mind. We were ready to move forward in a new direction after enjoying some warm Arizona sun. Then promptly after I posted it, we got the telephone call.
Exodus 20:12 "Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you".
My sister called to inform me that there had been some sort of accident on the farm and my mother was in the hospital. My mom is young, very active and rides horses as her work and career. My mother had broken her upper femur in four places. That is correct. Oddly broken from many angles in four places. The details of what happened were totally non-understandable but the details were not the issue. The issue was that she was going to need twenty-four hour care indefinitely and there is only one sibling who was truly capable of filling that roll. So, we kicked and screamed just a little because that's what you do when life redirects itself. I mean, we already had our spring planned out. I double checked and nope, sure enough, I did not have this even penciled in let alone written in pen on my calendar. But we were quickly reminded that our mission is to serve those who need and what good is it if we do not recognize family in need. It is not that we didn't want to help. We were just really excited to follow through with what WE had chosen. However, we prayed for direction in our service to people and we learned a long time ago that what you think the answer is suppose to look like is almost always not at all what God presents.
Before I got to be privy to the details of her case, we had to get from SE Arizona to NW Oregon. In the middle of the biggest rain/snow storm the west coast had seen in a long time. It took us four days. Ridiculous. We got laid over in Redding, California at the base of the Mt. Shasta because of road closures. While we were there our motorhome was tested for durability and we almost thought it wasn't going to make it. We finally had a break in the storm and we made a bolt for it. We arrived in Philomath, Oregon on March 20th.
Her leg was complicated enough that the orthopedic surgeons at the hospital did not feel qualified to handle her leg and there was talk of sending her two hours away in hopes of her being attended to by surgeons who may or may not have ever dealt with a case similar to hers. Two days of deliberation all the while my drugged up mother laid in the hospital, broken, giving everybody some of the best laughs they had had in a while. You would think the staff would tell the non-stoned family members present that the patient is on an I.V. drip of meds AND has access to a self managed button if she should need more. My sister made sure I knew that I had missed the best part because we arrived after her surgery and she was back home...off the I.V. Fortunately, she did not have to be transferred. A surgeon who had recently come back out of retirement decided he could tackle it as well as anybody. And he did. A rod through her hip, a rod down her femur, a couple of screws top and bottom and wrap it with some wire and we have a leg. The 24" suture that extended from hip to knee reminded me of closing the burlap bags full of wool that we use to have to jump in as kids during sheep shearing season to stuff as much wool in as possible before closing. Big black stitches that wrapped in and over creating a bulge of excess much like the top of a wool bag bursting at the seem.
The physical part of her healing process is on super fast recovery mode. The doctors were impressed by her progress. The original thought was no walking for at least six months maybe even a year with a goal of good use of the leg. Not full use but good use. Eight weeks later she was walking, almost full weight bearing with the use of aides, i.e. walker, cane etc. The emotional healing is a different kind of healing all together because though she will regain most use back in her leg, she may never gain back fully her active horsey lifestyle. Life will be different now and she doesn't know quite how it will be. That can be the most scary part of any recovery.
The details of her accident are very vivid in her mind and though she was in the presence of a horse, it was not a horse accident. It was a result of faulty body mechanics. Technically she has a degenerated knee that failed her and the mid-stride position her body was in was to much force for her upper leg to support when her knee gave out. So now she gets her knee replaced too.
Though I spent most of my time caring for my mom, I was able to get away some and experience the farm with my kids. I took them out and did what I did growing up there. Spring time is baby farm animal season and the farm is never without baby farm animals. It was crawling with kids (the goat kind not human), lambs and foals. The kids (my human kids, not goats) got to experience first hand God's plan for life and death all in the same instance.
One of the mares had difficulty foaling and while we were expecting a brand new vibrant baby horse the kids instead witnessed the death of the same foal before she was even born. The mare came into distress and the exam revealed a very dry, breech baby. Essentially a dead baby that could not be born. The mare was saved.
Earlier this spring there had been problems in the area with mountain lions. There had been sitings close to the farm and eventually one of them got a hold of some ewe's on the place. The wildlife and game control came and did a search and killed a monster cougar that had been dining on the sheep. He was six feet nose to tail. That's a big forest cat to find in your barn! But it was an awesome hands on, real life moment for my kids to see up close how God allows nature to work.
We were finishing up our plant science with a final project of collecting plant specimans. We couldn't have been in a better spot for that. There is everything in that science book, except cacti, right there on that farm. The valley was a great place to bring that kind of science to a closure.
Jeramie kept busy with farm work. During this time of family immersion it came to be on his heart to contemplate finding work that was more stationary. I faltered briefly this last winter with parking the RV but quickly came out of that funk. We still had ambitions of picking up our plans right where we would have been when we were done helping out my family. But lots of prayer brought us to a place of letting go of our itinerary. So we prayed that if God would have us settle down and plant again that it would nag both of us. We decided to start walking toward opportunities and keep walking as long as the doors were open.
The doors we walked towards were totally aligned by God. Jeramie is not one of these guys who has always wanted to be a ...(insert any profession here). He just started submitting resumes to companies who were advertising job descriptions that he thought he might enjoy. What we got was, from our perspective, completely random. He had doors open for Border Patrol, TSA as a US Air Marshall and from BNSF, a railway company that hauls freight. We moved toward them all and stopped with the first final offer that came, BNSF.
BNSF. Burlington Northern Santa Fe. They are the second biggest railway in the country with coverage in 28 states and 3 Canadian provinces. The position he was offered was in Forsyth, Montana. I had no idea where exactly that was but I get excited by the unknown so sounded good to me. Forsyth is in rural, Eastern Montana. In Rosebud county. The fourth largest county in Montana with a total population of 11,000 people. You read that right, 11,000 people in the COUNTY.
On May 18th, 2011 we moved to Miles City, Montana. For good...for now. But our journey is not over and since it is not over this is where I will leave you all and say good night. Until next time and I promise it will not be three months before you hear from me again, I hope to leave you hanging, wanting to hear more of our new chapter in life. The life that no matter how hard we try to plan never, ever turns out like we expect it to.
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