Change....

I'll never forget my first day of junior college at the L-tri-C...
Carrie and I had planned our schedules to be exactly the same our first semester and our 8:00 Tuesday morning class was "College & Life Skills" (I don't remember the exact name of the class, but it was one of the best classes of my entire college experience). Sharon Warner, our darling professor (who was also one of the best teachers of my entire college experience), stood before the class (of about 30 people) and began that first class by saying out loud as she wrote it on the chalkboard, "Change is Inevitable."

Let me be clear when I say I am not a fan of change. It's never been an easy thing for me. But if I've learned anything in this life of mine about change, it's that Mrs. Warner was right, and "it is inevitable"---

A couple weeks ago, we knew some change was going to happen around our house. Not serious change, but still change... (Big change or little change, either one still ruffles my feathers...)

DW's truck (which he bought after our 2nd date, 8 years ago), was starting to give him some trouble. He bought it brand new and in the 8 years and over one hundred thousand miles he's put on it, it's never needed more than an oil change, so we knew things were probably fixing to start tearing up. That's simply what happens...things get old, things tear up....they change.....
After weighing our options, we felt it best to go ahead and trade it in.

That was exciting, at first. I mean, who doesn't love the new car smell?

After a few days of looking and dealing, we found a truck that was the color and had everything DW wanted in it and decided to buy it.

Last Friday when he came home for lunch, DW said that it would be ready to pick up around 3:00 that day. Since we're always up for a field trip, Annabelle and I planned to go, too.

As he headed back to the office after lunch, I watched his truck go down the driveway. Then it hit me. It wasn't exciting anymore. Things were about to change.... and I don't like change...

That afternoon, on the way to get the new truck, I asked him if we couldn't just keep that one to ride around the farm or in the woods in... How could we just get rid of it???

That was the truck that with the exception of our first two dates, all our other ones were in.
That was the truck that my parents' dog, Rex, used to jump in, slide down the side and scratch, every time Devin would come over for dinner....we were too new into our relationship for him to dare say anything bad about the family dog, so he'd just grit his teeth and cringe every time Rex would jump in...ha...

That was the truck that we drove to my Granny's house on Christmas Eve to show her my engagement ring! In the glove box of that truck, the very day we got engaged, is where I put the box that my engagement ring came in, and it stayed there until last Friday when we cleaned the truck out.

That truck was what we drove away from our wedding in, and we are quite certain the new owners will find birdseed in occsionally, just like we have, for the past, almost 7 years.

I sat RIGHT THERE in my wedding dress!

That was the truck that, in our first year of marriage, I backed into the bumper...TWICE. (we had it fixed...both times....)
My boy rode in and "drove"

that truck.
My girl rode in
and "drove" that truck.

We'd been so many miles in it together (128,000, to be exact). We'd been through so much together in it. HOW could we just get rid of it?

Then I guess, like all change, we just have to roll with it. The papers were signed, we handed over our keys and they handed us the new keys. It was done. Change.

It could have been that the new car smell had gotten to me, but when we pulled in our driveway last Friday afternoon, I felt better about the change. We had lots of great times in that old truck, but it wasn't the truck that made it special... it was the people.

So now, we've got some miles to log and some memories to make before this one feels like "ours"....the car seat is strapped in and ready!

And to tell the truth, I never even really liked the color of the old truck... I've told DW before that had we been dating longer when he got it, I would have given him my opinion then. Thankfully, I didn't think after 2 dates that I had a say in what color his new truck should be. Ha!

So there it is... change.... you can resist it, you can not like it, but sooner or later, it's going to happen.... in the words of Sharon Warner, "Change is Inevitable." And this one turned out to be great... DW's loving his new truck... especially the remote start since it will be in the low 30's tomorrow morning!!!

~annie~