My family is moving to Ohio.
Most of you probably know this by now. They announced it this week. It's huge, isn't it? My Mom has close friends in Ohio, and my whole family actually seems energized by the idea.
My dad's talked about moving for most of my life. Kansas, Costa Rica, Brazil, the Middle East, Foley. He likes to go. I got my adventurous spirit from him.
But I'm also a homebody, and all of that talk of moving has always been traumatizing to me. So it's incredible to me that when I heard that my Mom and Dad are going to move, I immediately felt excitement for them. For us as a family. It just felt right.
Now, I already announced that I was moving out: to Elk River with a friend. In the last few weeks, I've been cast into a torturous struggle, making the impossible decision: to go with my family or to stay with my friends and my business.
I've been talking to mentors, seeking Godly guidance, searching my heart for the answers to a question I wished had never been asked, trying to decide whether I loved my family more or my friends more, new opportunities or current situation - similar but forever altered. How could I live without my family?
My mentors tried to be non-partisan. I wanted to beg them to tell me what to do, but I knew I couldn't do that. One similar thread emerged through the mist of my mind: one familiar refrain that said it's not where you are, it's who you are.
I had decided to go to Ohio, but this refrain challenged me. You see, I am an incredibly loyal person - loyal to a fault. Which is why I identify with Anakin Skywalker. He, too, was asked to make an impossible decision: his wife and mentor Palpatine or his friend Obi-Wan. I was forced to choose between family and friends.
But as that refrain it's not where you are, it's who you are slowly, slowly sunk in, I began to see it a different way. It's not what do I have to do - it's what do I want to do. Who do I want to be?
That's the real question.
It became apparent to me that This Process was the way God was working in my life. It wasn't "Is God gonna work in my life more in Ohio or Elk River?" It was Him. Working. In. Me. NOW. The process of choosing a direction for the coming years was really a direction in itself.
It's not about me choosing. It's about who the process of choosing makes me into.
And last Wednesday, as I stepped out of the car alone, home after dropping Cori off after youth group, with the stars above me and the beautiful dark around me, muting everything that shouts in the daytime, I realized who I want to be.
I'm ready to be an adult.
Now don't get me wrong... I've been an adult for 3 years. Technically. I feel I've been an adult for longer - since maybe 16 or so. I think we rather handicap young adults by calling them teenagers. (What does that mean, anyway?) I've always been responsible and self-motivated. But I haven't ever been independent, lived outside of my parent's house, left home for more than two weeks, or had any job besides babysitting or teaching ballet and running that business. I was scared to leave my close-knit family when I was going to be only 30 minutes away from them. How in the world could I ever consider living 12 HOURS from them?
I've always wondered what growing up really meant. Was it when you got your first car? When you fell in love? When you moved out or finally got over missing your family on missions trips? When you suddenly felt wise?
None of the above. I know what it means now. Growing up doesn't mean walking forward without fear... It simply means choosing to walk forward.
Saying: I WILL and putting the decision behind you.
Being an adult is a choice.
And here, right now, I'm making that choice. I'm ready to face income taxes and car insurance and rent and roommates, finding friends without a family to back me up, asking for help of people who aren't obligated to provide it, calling the tow on my own and being okay with being afraid.
And I felt such freedom.
I can do anything. Ok, not anything, but I'm choosing to be brave enough to do what I want.
And that is a freedom I did not have.
Making the decision to be an adult made me less afraid of going to Ohio. But it also illuminated what I really wanted very quickly: to stay.
And so I'm staying here in Minnesota, with a wonderful roommate and a ballet business I adore, with a book that's almost finished and wise mentors and fabulous friends, with opportunity and disaster covering the road ahead of me, with my favorite person at my side: God.
I'm not abandoning my family, nor are they abandoning me. They are walking into God's opportunity for them, and I am walking into mine, and we are still walking together, even though there's now distance between the outstretched hands that once were interlocked. I'll visit them this fall, over Christmas, and next spring, and I'll talk their ears off on the phone, and we'll still be close. Few things could ever really break the closeness between us... it'll just be stretched a little bit.
I'm gonna miss 'em. No denying that. But I had to choose, and I'm happy with my choice.
I'm really going to miss this property: my special room, the woods I so love, the random bits of swamp that I named stupid things like "Indian Point" and "Five Oak Island," the rooms which I remember in five or six stages, the same space I jump-roped on my thirteenth birthday being the same place I ran across on boring summer days with my brothers, and took pictures for a Murder Mystery Party, and filmed movies with friends, and kicked the dog because he was sniffing my food. Layers upon layers of memory color this place in more beauty than Pottery Barn could possibly endow it with, and I will miss it like a home, the home that I grew up in, the place that represents the time in my life that I can now never return to. How do I deal with that sadness? I don't know. But I do know that
If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it. - John Irving