Jeff Manion - The Land Between: Finding God in Difficult Transitions

Affectionately dedicated to my wife, Chris.

We have now shared the journey for thirty years.

M Y PRAYER FOR YOU AS YOU read this book is that God will visit you with grace in your season of transition. I pray that the barren landscape of trial will become the fertile soil for new growth. May our gracious God revive your spirit and restore your laughter. May you find him in your pain and trust him in your waiting. May the One who redeems all things meet you powerfully as you journey through the Land Between.

O NE L ATE N OVEMBER MORNING WHEN I was in seventh grade, tragedy reshaped our family and segmented timelife before the accident and life after.

During the life before the accident, my parents had served together planting churches in southeastern Idaho for fifteen years. My sister, the eldest, was thirteen. My younger brothers were nine, four, and an infant. I was twelve. My dads father had died, and my parents were hurriedly preparing to depart for the funeral in Michigan. They would need to drive through the night to make it in time. Of the five children, four of us would be sent to stay with various friends, remaining in Idaho. Jamie, my two-month-old brother, would be traveling with my parents because Mom was nursing. They planned to be gone for two weeks.

While sifting through a large box of family pictures last month, I discovered a handwritten note neatly penned by my mother thirty-five years ago. The information in the note provides instructions for the care of my nine-year-old brother, Jon, during my parents trip. As I read the note, I was struck by Moms neat penmanship and attention to detail in the enumerated list:

1. Hot lunch ticket to be paid on Monday$2.25 a week.
2. Trash pickup is Thursday.
3. Jons bedtime is 9:00.
4. Jons bus comes at 8:35 in the morning and brings him home around 3:45.
5. Clean sheets are in the trunk. There are some in the family room too.
6. The timer on my dryer works opposite of what it should. If you have a large load, set it for about 10 minutes; if just a small load, set it for 50-60.
7. Our doctor in Poky [Pocatello, Idaho] is Dr. Brydon, but we also go to Dr. Thurson here in Blackfoot. It would probably be easier for you to take him to Dr. T. if he needs a doctor.

Thanks so much for helping out this way. Well probably call a couple times to see how things are going. Were supposed to get home Dec. 15. Thats a long time to be gone!

That night, on Interstate 80 in western Nebraska, our family van veered off the road and rolled several times as it crossed the median before coming to rest. My father and baby brother sustained minor injuries. Mom was thrown from the van and died hours later at the hospital in a nearby town.

We were not ready to lose her. I was not ready to lose her.

The terms dizzying or disorienting do not carry the weight of our experience as I try to adequately depict the emotional swirl of those days. The heart had been removed from our house.

Mom had always been at home when I ran down the street from the bus stop after school and flew through the front door. Our yellow house on Jewell Street was a split-level home where the landing opened to stairways leading both up and down. My daily entrance ritual began with yelling an announcement from the landing that I was home. I think I did this to discern whether Mom was upstairs or down. After the accident, I found myself mindlessly reenacting this routine from years of habit. Up the driveway, through the door, Mom! Im home! And then the deafening silence slapped me with the reality that she was gone.

A few months after the accident, my father accepted a position as a teacher and administrator of a small Bible college, and our family moved to East Grand Rapids, Michigan. It is an affluent community with old brick homes, manicured lawns, and mature trees. Dad found a great buy on a nice house not far from his work, so we landed there. Socially, I did not belong.

Junior high can be awful in any town, and I could have been awkward almost anywhere. This just happens to be the setting where my awkwardness was overexposed due to my cultural illiteracy. Blackfoot, Idaho, where I had spent my grade school years, had simply not prepared me for status-conscious East Grand Rapids.

From a fashion standpoint, the footwear of choice was a specific brand of deck shoe, which I had never even seen before entrance into East Grand Rapids Middle School, gracefully perched beside Reeds Lake. Until designer jeans became the rage, straight-leg Levis were the preference. I was the kid from Idaho, wearing Wrangler jeans that were too short, Keds sneakers, and the same shirt to school every day.

Soon after our arrival to Michigan, Dad became engaged and married a young secretary and recent graduate of the Bible college where he served. Carolyn was twenty-one when she became mother to two preschoolers, a grade-schooler, and two teenagers. Carolyn has one of the most gracious spirits I have ever encountered. She is cheerful and caring, and she was a godsend to our family. Little imagination is required, however, to guess that the transition from single secretary to wife and mother of five was a bit rough.

I spent eighth grade trying to regain my balance. By the end of ninth grade, I was beginning to figure things out a bit. I changed shirts with greater regularity, I no longer wore Wranglers, and I had a few friends. I was hopeful that things might work out after all. Then, at the end of ninth grade, Dad informed us that we would be moving to Sacramento, California. I was livid. I couldnt believe I had to start the whole process all over again.

The sequence of transitions was jarring. I had begun seventh grade securely nestled in a small western town where I had spent all my grade school years. Three years, one funeral, one wedding, and two cross-country moves later, I was beginning my sophomore year in Sacramento.

I have often reflected on this season of profound disorientation and chaos. I have also reflected on Gods movement and mercy during this difficult time of upheaval and transition. I suspect that this season we endured as a family enlarged my heart for others passing through similar periods of difficult transition. I was in the Land Between.

Tom sits in the silence of his unlit living room. It is after midnight and the kids are asleep. Today was the scheduled closing on a house, and today the closing was canceled. Not postponed, canceled. The deal fell apart. He sits in the darkness repeating the number that robs him of sleep. Three houses, he thinks to himself. Ive sold three houses this year. Two years ago I closed on twenty-seven homes, a house every two weeks. How much longer can I do this? How much longer can we continue to drain our retirement account to pay monthly bills? Should I find a second job until things turn around? What if things dont turn around for years? I feel like Im bleeding cash, pillaging our future to survive the present. And if I get out of real estate sales, what else am I good at? What else could I possibly choose as a new career?

Three houses, he whispers aloud.

This is the Land Betweenwhere life is not as it once was, where the future is in question.

Karen fumbles for the phone in a sleepy haze. The red numerals on the alarm clock read 3:17. In the moment before Hello, she takes a quick mental inventory: Are all the kids home? She is conscious enough to reason that either someone has dialed a wrong number or the family is about to receive some awful news. Hello, she mumbles. The room spins as she hears the voice of her sister on the other end: Karen, theres been an accident.