Phoenix 1994

I hated Phoenix.

I hated everything about it with the fiery white intensity of a thousand suns – which, not so coincidentally, felt like exact temperature of my car steering wheel after it baked in the 120-degree July heat for eight hours while I typed in a cubicle. (I had to wear oven mitts to drive home.)

I hated the cactus-and-rock yards. I hated the miles of pink stucco houses with red tile roofs. I hated the flatness of the terrain. I hated the way the sun glinted off the cars in the midday sun. I hated that the thermometer rarely dipped below 95, even at night.

Most of all, I hated the dry barrenness of the desert. I grew up in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. My favorite t-shirt proclaimed, “Water is life.” And I lived it. I spent every free minute of the summer swimming and water-skiing and diving and boating in the cool, clean lakes around my home. I loved taking a nap on the floating raft on Lake Johanna and waking up to the sound of boat motors and cottonwood leaves dancing on the breeze. My world was blue and green.

Until my new husband and I accepted a job relocation to Arizona. Then my world was orange and red and brown. No green. No blue.

Just a smear of ugly.

Friends who grew up in Phoenix tried to convince me of the dessert’s beauty. They took me to Sedona. “Isn’t it beautiful?” they would sigh as we drove past grotesque mounds of exposed rock.

No. To me, it looked dead and hellish and like God threw the leftovers of sin here and let them rot.

They took me to Pleasant Lake, a man-made reservoir north of Phoenix, hoping to assuage my desperate thirst for water. I found a muddy brown puddle set in the middle of more cactus and scrub bushes, with dead trees on the shores. It was neither a lake nor pleasant.

To be fair, this was my first real time moving away from home. I wasn’t just dealing with a new climate. I was trying to cope with a new marriage and a new job and a new life, even as I mourned the loss of family and friends and familiarity. And water.

I didn’t see how I would ever find comfort in the desolation. How could this be home? How could I relate to people who planted saguaro in their front yard on purpose? How could I cope with being inside all summer due to the blistering heat, with the thought that I would be wearing flip-flops and tank tops and still sweating in October, with the blisters on my thighs from those sneaky sizzling seatbelt buckles?

And then we moved. Eight months after we moved to Phoenix, Corey’s company offered him another job relocation – this time, to (blessed, green, temperate, seaside) San Diego.

I wish I had known Phoenix was only a season. Maybe I wouldn’t have complained so much. Maybe I would have enjoyed the adventure. Maybe I would have looked for God in the desert instead of always and only looking at me.

Maybe.