~it's a funny thing about leaving your heart in two different places~

And so last night I laid my head down for sleep in my hometown of Haven, Kansas.  We had come over 600 miles yesterday, leaving our home in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and driving for nearly 12 hours to get here.  The stormy skies started to surround us just about the time we saw the Reno County line and as the evening went on the rain, hail, and wind arrived as well.  I had forgotten what it was like to be in tornado watches and warnings but last evening I received my refresher course.  None to worry.

We were safe and sound.

As we started out yesterday morning in the early hours of 5 a.m. the moon was still bright in a pitch black sky.  The sunrise occurred as we were crossing over Monarch Pass and before we knew it, we were stopping for a bit of breakfast in Salida, Colorado.  One by one, we checked off the towns that we always go through as we cross over to the other side of the Great Continental Divide.  Gunnison, Salida, Canon City, Pueblo, La Junta, Lamar and then finally the Kansas border near the little town called Coolidge.  I swear that after making all of the passages that I have between Kansas and Colorado in the last two years that I could do this with my eyes closed and yesterday, I did mostly just that.

Thank goodness Mike was the driver and I was only the "some time" navigator.

We will have a busy two days here and then Friday we are off to Oklahoma and Texas for a bit more of a visit.  By Sunday we shall return home to the mountains and the following day, start a new week at school.  I missed "the 20" yesterday and even though I know they were in very good hands, it still seemed strange to be away from them.  I kept glancing at the clock every so often as I realized it was a reading rotation time, lunch or recess, and finally about 2:00 in the  afternoon an early release day for them.  We are accustomed to being together with one another, you know?  It doesn't seem right to leave them but sometimes I must.

Life is what it is.

It's a funny thing about leaving your heart in two different places.  When I left Kansas two years ago next month, it nearly did me in.  Even though I was newly married and had a beautiful life ahead of me, my heart was broken into about a gazillion different pieces.  I'm sure that I left a trail of blood all the way from the place where I started to the place where I ended up.  Kansas had been my whole existence and I wasn't sure that I could manage anywhere else.  The first 60 days were filled with loneliness and a feeling of extreme loss.  One by one, I marked those first days off in my mind with tallies like a prisoner would do on the wall of their cell as they awaited the completion of their "sentence".  Even though I can smile about it today, I wasn't so sure that my death certificate wouldn't read the following.

"She died because she had to leave Kansas."

I didn't die and as a matter of fact I not only survived, I thrived!

I owe so many thanks to my dear, kind and loving husband Mike for enduring those rough beginning 8 weeks with me.  He never once got upset about anything and continually reassured me that it was going to be ok. Little by little, taking the tiniest of baby steps, we would make it and you know what?  He was right.  We did.

At just the right moment in early August of 2013, God provided the "cure" for my homesickness and despair and it came in the proverbial "nick of time", believe you me.  The sweet and dear community of Olathe, Colorado was waiting for me to join them at the elementary school there.  Those wonderful people, the finest of educators around, became my new friends and family.  They threw out the "lifeline" to a Kansas flatlander who was floundering all over the place and drowning in a sea of utter despair.  Those good people were saving me and they didn't even realize it at the time.  It was no accident at all that we should have met one another.  It most certainly was not the "leftovers" that God had available to him at the time and instead of just throwing them all away, He thought it'd be best to use them up some place.  That was not the case at all.

He intended for it to have happened.  It was meant to be.

And so now that I am home for a few days in a place that I love with all of my heart, I realize that I have left behind a huge chunk of my heart in a school that I have grown to love more each and every day that passes by.  All told, I have taught in many schools during my 37 years as a teacher.  They have all been fine ones, each of them with their own strong staff who genuinely care about one thing and one thing only.

The children.

Even though they have all been most special to me, I believe that Olathe Elementary shall go down in the memory of this veteran teacher as the place that I loved in the most unique way.  To them, I will always be beholden.  Those good folks helped to save the new marriage of a couple of kids from "the land of long ago and far, far away."  I'm not too sure that many other elementary schools could say that they have accomplished that.

Olathe friends~I love each of you very much and thank you from deep inside of my heart.  For as long as I am around on this earth, I will always remember you.

It is quiet here along the plains this morning as I type these words.  The storms from last night appear to have gone away.  The tornado watches and warnings have long since expired and life returns to normal until the next storm comes.  You know, I really wasn't even all that worried or concerned for some strange reason.  I've been through many tornado watches and warnings in my life and even though I have a healthy respect for them, I'm not that afraid.  If you live in the infamous "Tornado Alley", then you have to expect them from time to time.  The storms of weather, the storms of normal and every day life are all a part of God's wonderful plan for the good of all who undergo them.

I shall always remain unafraid.

This sign will forever have special meaning to me as it reminds me that the road of life goes many different ways.  From this corner in South Hutchinson, Kansas it is exactly 611 miles to the beautiful San Juan Mountains of Colorado.

October of 2013 in front of the old Grier Pharmacy building here in Haven, Kansas.  I met up with my dear friend from high school, Annetta, at the annual Fall Festival.  This town is filled to overflowing with the best of memories from days now long ago passed.  To my parents, I will always be thankful that they raised us up here in this little community in south central Kansas. They gave us the best gift that they could have right here.