It’s the Friday before Christmas. Sounds like the perfect
time to take a minute or three and write a brief Christmas letter – mostly because
if I wait much later, it will no longer be a Christmas letter but an after
Christmas letter!
 |
| Haven't aged a bit... |
Most of you know that this summer the Meyer family moved
from Crosby, Texas to a small community outside of Victoria. Why would a family
with two teenagers and a 20 year old move from a suburb of Houston, with all of
it’s metropolitan attraction, to a county that has fewer than 50,000 people?
Well, it’s so that I could fulfill my lifelong aspiration of
starting a biker bar. The ministry got too mundane and the clothing options
were too dull – black, black, black. I now get to break up knife fights,
referee pool and dart games, wear beer company T-shirts without sleeves and slide
bottled beer down a 30 foot bar while yelling “Inbound!” Yeah, the tatoos hurt –
I had to prove myself, you know – but now everyone knows how much I love my Mommy. The leathers were expensive, but the teal makes my eyes pop. And, now that
I have my Vespa bored out, I’m putting almost 43 horses to the ground in an intimidating
whisper. I even spun the tire last night in soft sand before I sat on it. I think I’m
earning the guys’ respect. Why, just last week they stopped laughing every time
I sing when Cher comes on the jukebox on Kareoke night.
Laura is adapting well to being a Biker Momma. She works for
the local education district during the day. It did raise a few eyebrows the
first time she visited a school with a piece of logging chain for a purse
strap, but the Skoal can in her back pocket and the tobacco stain at the corners of her mouth pretty well silenced the naysayers. Let’s just
say no one has been able to complain twice. At night, when she works the bar
for me, she can swear bad enough that Tiny and Carl both blush. Apparently,
those years of teaching 6th graders have really paid off.
Alyssa has finally turned a corner in college. The
University of Alabama will never be the same. She applied to the MBA program
this fall. Her entrance essay, “How gambling is a profitable solution for
student debt,” has gotten a lot of attention, she said. We got a phone call that both the dean
of students and the president of the university have made appointments with her
in January. In fact, they said the FCC and U.S. Department of Education
want to sit in on the meeting. I think that FCC stands for Federally Certified
Currency. Maybe they’re the ones doing this Bitcoin thing I keep hearing about. This is going to be big!
Megan is doing remarkably well at school. I am so proud of
her. Her grades are outstanding and she is developing a real knack for floral
design. Her teacher expressed some “concern,” she said, for her creative use of
marijuana in her Thanksgiving display but I told her it was synthetic - just artificial leaves. The
teacher was so embarrassed that she blushed bright red. The display got a lot
of attention – even the Sheriff’s Department wanted to see her work. She got
her picture taken for the local paper and everything! We should be able to
enjoy a few hours with her at Christmastime over a lunch of Moon Pies and Cokes
from the vending machine.
And Christopher is a chip off the old block. He’s chopped
his bicycle and is making money, hand over fist, selling “loaner” parts to
bikers whose bikes suddenly have a distributor cap or spark plug wire disappear
from the parking lot. You know those machines at gas stations that cost about a
buck fifty to air up tires? He “found” one in town and, using a YouTube video,
rewired it a bit. I’m not sure how he fixed it, but bikers have to keep coming
in for more change when their tires mysteriously go flat.
Speaking of, Bart – we call him Sheriff; his grandmother's Dutch – just came in for
the fourth dollar’s worth of quarters and he’s starting to give me the stink
eye. I think I better go punch up Cher on the juke box, so he doesn’t get the
wrong idea.
Now that I got your attention, in a nut-shell, we’re all
doing very well. We really did move to Victoria – not for a biker bar, but to
serve a new church: Zion Lutheran in Mission Valley. In a lot of ways, it
reminds me of the community I grew up in and the fit has been good. It’s a
place where my skills fit with what is needed, and I am being challenged – in the
good sense – and stretching my muscles in ways I haven’t done before. Laura
works for the Education Service District that covers something like 40 school
districts. Her years in the classroom are paying off, as she now provides
training for secondary education teachers in areas of English, reading, and
writing. She likes what she does, but it is challenging.
Alyssa is in her junior year at the University of Alabama,
continuing in the mechanical engineering program. She really has applied for
MBA school; we’re waiting to see if she has been accepted. It’s always interesting
listening to her talk about what she is learning – it’s beyond what I ever
imagined as a young man in school, and I find it a fascinating world of
learning. Megan is also a junior, but in high school. She has done well transitioning
from one school to another. She is zeroing in on her interest in animal care
and is working towards a certification process that would lead to veterinary
tech certification. Yes, she is also actually taking a floral arrangement class
and she does have a knack for that as well. Perhaps a summer job will be in
line, using that skill. Christopher had a great fall and started off with a bang
– or a tackle, as it were. He got to play football for the first time as
starting linebacker for the 7th grade B team. Although his team didn’t
log a single win, he had a good season, making several solo tackles. His hopes
of catching an offensive pass (or is that catching a pass offensively?) didn’t
quite happen. Always next year, bud!
The big news this fall was, of course, Hurricane Harvey. We
evacuated to my mom’s house in Walburg and watched in fascination as the
reports came out of this area of winds that were over 100 miles per hour, and
then the storm just slowly ground around here for a couple days. It left, in
its wake, devastation continues to be cleaned up even now – four months later.
Homes are still tarped; trees are still down; fences are still broken; some homes
are still not able to be lived in. We
are thankful: our house didn’t even have a scratch. Our inconvenience was that
the DirectTV receiver was torqued a few degrees so that we didn’t have high-def
channels for a week, and our internet antenna had to be replaced. Comparatively
speaking, it is only worth mentioning as a humorous anecdote.
In all things, we are grateful that the Lord has led us to
this place. We do miss our friends from Crosby and think of them, and our
church family there, often and with fondness. We also don’t get to see our
families as much as we would like. Hopefully, 2018 will allow us a little more
freedom to do so as we continue to settle in here.
To all who are receiving this via email, please do so with
my apologies. Poor planning on our part has led us to neither write nor mail
this out in good time, so we are having to resort to the US Mail’s replacement:
the “neutral” internet. From our family to yours, we pray God’s richest
blessings to you this Christmastide and into the New Year.
With all our love, and with prayers for peace and joy,
The Meyer Family
No comments:
Post a Comment