Painting Pictures of Egypt

I’ve been painting pictures of Egypt, and leaving out what it lacks
The future looks so hard and I want to go back
But the places that used to fit me cannot hold the things I’ve learned
And those roads were closed off to me when my back was turned.


When we left our church of 16 years this song by Sara Groves summed up how I felt. Just like the Hebrews were saved by God from the darkness of slavery, we were saved by God from a different kind of darkness. Yet, just as those Hebrews longed for the comfort of the familiar servitude they knew, I longed for the familiar comfort of the church that was no longer my home.

Two years later we moved from Tehachapi -- we fled and didn’t look back. No more million places to jog painful memories. No more small-town politics and small-mindedness of many of the people there. No more fighting snow, fog, ice covered steep hills to drive to work.

Tehachapi was a wonderful place to raise the kids. We bought our A-frame in the pine trees almost sight-unseen. An A-Frame was our dream home, and on clear days we had a six mountain view (one mountain range behind another, behind another). We grew comfortable with the wildlife – from bears to mountain lions, deer to bobcats. I delighted in the variety and colors of birds at our birdfeeders, and mourned any landscaping I attempted my first few years.



We did Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts, and were involved with the same church for sixteen years. The adults there watched our son grow from age two to age eighteen. I worked at the elementary school that the kids went to, and Marty taught at the middle school. We couldn’t go to a grocery store without running into people we knew.

If a neighbor ran into trouble on Deertrail we would help out with our Jeep & winch. If we ran into car trouble anywhere – even in Bakersfield – we knew someone would come help us out. When you live in a small town everybody knows your business, and everybody cares.

It was time for us to move on, after the kids were grown and gone. I had been driving to Palmdale from the mountaintop for ten years. We wanted convenience and easy to reach health care.

The woods weren’t just ours anymore. More full-time neighbors moved in. The rock castle fort (mountain boulders tumbled together by nature) that our kids played was now behind a fence.




Our house was packed full of memories of birthday parties, Christmases, cooking on the wood stove when the power was out, drying laundry on a clothesline in the loft when we had no drier, a herd of Malamute puppies tumbling after their mama, Quake. Calvin coming out of his bedroom, pretending he was a ghost, oooo, oooo, with a sheet over his head, walking straight for the stairs, where he tumbled down to hit the cement downstairs floor. I painted that cement floor in patterns of leaves and ferns.



Our house was a shell when we moved in, and full of lovingly made custom cabinetry and additions when we moved out. Marty built closets, cupboards and walls to make us a bedroom upstairs. We added on a bedroom above the dining room. Rhiannon painted her walls lavender, blue, and teal (splatter paint). When Calvin moved into that room later we didn’t let him paint it so he covered it up with Star Wars and Star Trek posters. We turned the two tiny bedrooms downstairs into a master bedroom and master bath.










After the puppies were done using the dining room as a whelping box Marty turned the dining room into a kitchen. He tore out the walk-through vacation cabin kitchenette, and in the process, beautified our living room. Our kitchen viewed the pine woods on three sides. Marty made every cabinet and convenience out of love for me. I do miss my kitchen. I also miss my closet. We actually added onto our house so that I could have a walk-in closet. Every shelf and rod was placed to order. It was beautiful. I didn’t get to use this creation from Marty long enough.

Although I miss some things about my house and the nature we lived in, there are many things about living here that make up for it. One of them is having walls! Walls to hang pictures and artwork on! Plenty of room for grandbaby pictures.

When we tell people we moved from Tehachapi people here think we’re nuts. Why are we living in the desert, with gang-infested schools, and temperatures over 100 in the summer? We’ve always said we don’t miss Tehachapi. Marty still teaches there, but we don’t miss living there. In fact, he loves it when he has a snow day in Tehachapi, because he doesn’t have to get me to work in Palmdale. Instead he can work on his airplane all day.

We like the convenience of stores being 5 minutes away, we love our lovely little neighborhood where we walk the dogs twice a day and we enjoy our grassy, shady backyard. Sure we had over an acre of pine woods, but pine woods mean dust and dirt in the house. It’s easier to keep things clean now. We have all the conveniences – air conditioning, central heating, and DSL!

The hardest part about leaving Tehachapi was leaving friends. But in a way we had already done it. Most of the friends we socialized with were with the church we had to leave. When events pushed me into a cloud of depression I couldn’t do much in the way of socializing, anyway. It took us awhile, but we have finally found a church family we love here in the Antelope Valley. I’ve been healing and improving. I find joy in the grandbabies, and I again find joy in the Lord.


…and the places I long for most are the places where I’ve been,
They’re calling out to me like a long lost friend
I’ve been painting pictures of Egypt, and leaving out what it lacks
The future looks so hard and I want to go back

Two incidents in the past few days made me “paint pictures of Egypt” or miss Tehachapi.

I spent 3 hours in the dentist chair yesterday. I like this dentist office – it took me awhile to find one I liked. This is my third visit so I’ve been going there for a year now. Very professional, friendly, thoughtful of the patient’s needs, beautifully decorated, nice music. I listened to the dental hygienist and the technician chat about weekend plans. The head dentist popped in to say hi, he said he met me at my first visit a year ago. And suddenly I missed Dr. Wells’ office with a pain in my stomach and tears in my eyes. I went to playgroup with Dr. Wells’ wife, and our kids grew up together. His twin daughters and my son both studied in France. We both have a love of sled dogs. If I was lucky I got one of the hygienists I was friends with – and we’d chat about our kids, Scouts, schools. If not, we still would chat about kids and school because I knew all the schools so well. Maybe their kid had Marty as a teacher. Or maybe I knew one of their teachers. (There are only 3 elementary schools in Tehachapi – I worked at one for years and student taught at the other two).

Marty still goes to Dr. Wells. I don’t want to drive to Tehachapi after work if I have a tooth problem or appointment. I like my new dentist. But OH I miss Dr. Wells and his office.

Our bible study leaders host many parties for church. Their swimming pool and spa is always very popular with the kids. On 100+ degree days we eye the pool with some lust, but it is usually full of splashing children. We learned from years of living in Bear Valley Springs that it’s hard to relax in a pool full of kids. We’d go to pool at the Country Club and kids would be climbing all over “Mr. Feehan.” Teaching in a small community for 18 years you get used to getting mauled at the neighborhood pools, and receiving special, respectful treatment by waiters who were goofballs back in 7th grade.

A couple days ago we went to our friends’ house for a party celebrating the end of a study. This time I was determined to get in that pool! There were about seven kids there, ranging in age from around 12 to 18. I enjoyed watching two friends goof around with their three teenagers. Marty and I were playing with a pool noodle. Bobbing around on it, bending it, talking about all the possibilities. A pool noodle had been the subject of the morning’s children sermon! At one point Marty splashed the daughter of our host with the noodle. Instead of laughing, or splashing back or anything, she gave him a look like “who are you, anyway?” I realized these teenagers don’t know us well enough to goof around with us. We weren’t there when they were little kids.

One of the things I grieved the most about leaving our previous church was leaving the kids that I had known and ministered to since they were babies. While “church-shopping” I had a tough time if the “children’s choir” did a song. I didn’t know any of the kids! I’m getting better by being involved in VBS the past two years. Also, I’ve had the pleasure to get reacquainted with some of the kids I had left behind in Tehachapi through FaceBook. However, last Sunday in the Balch’s pool I realized that there won’t be any kids playing with or attacking “Mr. Feehan” in the pool anymore. At least, not until we go swimming with the grandkids.

Thank you, Lord for our grandbabies and the joy they bring. Thank you, Lord, for the new ministries you are giving us. We’ll keep moving on, step by step.

But the places that used to fit me cannot hold the things I’ve learned
And those roads were closed off to me when my back was turned