I have a few more comments/topics to address about being a rural pastor's wife, but I thought I would take a break today and answer some comments that have been made about my rural pastor's wife series. I chose to not comment back on most of the posts that comments were made on-I just waited to address them here.
1. Thank you to those of you who left comments on this series. It's helpful to me to know that I'm not alone in some of this. Actually the most helpful comments were from those of you that don't live in rural areas but still do some of the same things-like stocking your pantry. It's not too late to add more comments on any of the posts in this series if you want to!
2. Helpful Teacher asked about my salad dressing recipes. I just picked some out of the cookbook-nothing fancy. The Lambs particularly like homemade poppy seed dressing with oranges and walnuts on spinach or lettuce. I only use walnuts because that is what I usually have, I think it would be good with almonds too.
3. Agnusdei1996 talked about the difference between our situations and how she doesn't miss/think about many things that I talk about in my posts. I don't know if I've stressed this in my posts, but the difficulty I have with being here is that I came from the second largest town in IN to a town of 113. There is no grocery store, place to buy gas, or bank in our town. I lived in Fort Wayne from 1989-2003 with the exception of 4 years at college but coming home on breaks. I learned how to drive in a big city and quickly got used to borrowing the family car to make a quick run to Target or the bank. I didn't have a car my first two years of college so I did shopping when I came home on breaks. When I was teaching I would run all over town to multiple stores to get supplies for my classroom. My other difficulty is that living in a small town would be easier for me if it was within 1 hour of a big city. I have a friend that was in that situation and she constantly complained about being one whole hour away from the city. She has now moved and would probably like to be back in that situation of only one hour away. But living 3 hours away from a big city, 4 hours from a really big city, and driving 1 1/2 hours to just get to a big town is difficult for me. I am thankful for the Internet and being able to buy things online or it would be even more difficult for me to live here. I'm don't mean this to sound like I'm complaining, because I am happy that Ram currently has a Call and the people are so nice to us here and I could go on and on about our blessings of living here (see some of the previous posts in this series). I also know that there is more to life than shopping. But that doesn't change that it was really difficult for me to adapt to living here when we first moved here as it was so different from where I came from. It really has become better since we moved here almost 8 years ago and I got used to it.
4. Esther commented that she wouldn't be able to survive without play dates and that she needed time to get together with her friends. I have a college friend that told me that once too. I think it is a blessing that we moved here before we had children, so I have no idea what I am missing with play dates because I've never had them. My comment to my college friend was that if she was in a similar situation as myself, she really could survive without play dates, even if she didn't like it. I learned things to do without having play dates.
Esther's other comment was that kids have to come in contact with germs some times. I agree and I'm sorry if the post sounded like I was truly afraid of germs and trying to keep my kids in a bubble so they didn't get sick. That was not the way it was intended. What I meant was this-when we used to have a babysitter come once a week, every week during the winter on the morning of babysitting day-we would have to call each other and make sure that we were all healthy enough for her to come over. Neither one of our families just wanted to pass germs back and forth and be sick all winter. Every week the day before babysitting day, I would think about if the runny noses were too bad to have her come etc. Her mom did the same thing with her before she came to our house. About once a month during the winter one of us would be too sick to get together and then I missed out on a babysitter. I'm thinking that the same thing would happen with play group. We did not go to ECFE last fall and it has not begun yet this spring. We were not sick with any major sickness so far this season. Our friends with kids in the area have been sick a lot this season. We still go to Sunday School and out to community events, so they had chances to get sick. But it wasn't the one hour every week in a room full of kids chance to get sick that they had at ECFE. The part of play group that I wouldn't want is the DECISION about healthy kids. I hope this explained this better.
Come back tomorrow as I continue this series on being a rural pastor's wife.
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