Changes

My husband and I have lived in Midland, Texas for a little over three months. Funny story on how we got here. We lived in Houston all our married lives- 29 years. We raised our four children (current ages 19-26) in Houston. We weren’t planning on moving. However, my husband was laid off just before the pandemic, and we decided to expand his search for a new job outside our comfort zone. While searching, he asked if he should apply to a few that he saw in Midland, Texas. I told him that I did not want to move to the Texas desert of Midland and that he should definitely not apply to those. 

He found one in Colorado to apply to, and we were all excited about the possibility of moving to “Rocky Mountain High.” Even my two oldest sons were going to follow us as their jobs are remote so they can work from anywhere. My daughter excitedly started applying to nursing schools in the Colorado area. We were all ecstatic when he got the job! While he worked remotely from our home in Houston due to the pandemic, we began prepping our Houston home to sell and looking online for houses in the Denver area. Just before they required him to be in the Denver office, the company went bankrupt and was sold. We were grateful the new company wanted to keep my husband on, but their main office was not in Denver. The new company is headquartered in – wait for it – Midland, Texas. We were worried it would be difficult to find another job in the oil industry, as times are tough, so he took the job, and we moved to the only place I said I did not want to move to. God has a sense of humor.

My family teases me and says that God wanted us here in Midland, and He did what He had to in order to get us here. Living in Midland hasn’t been as bad as I initially thought. We have great neighbors; we love our house (we downsized because most of our kids did NOT follow us here-LOL); the sunsets are beautiful; the lower humidity makes the weather more enjoyable than Houston; and the traffic is non-existent compared to Houston. Many of the neighborhoods have desert-scapes (rocks and cactus), but we found a new community with grass and trees that we love. My husband and I stroll through the neighborhood with our dogs every evening and enjoy the sunsets and cooler weather. Midland’s not so bad. Maybe God was right to move us here.