Moving On

As you can see, it's been 8 years since I last posted. I went back to occasionally writing in my paper journal. So much has happened and continues to happen. Anyone that might read this is probably wondering, why I'm beginning to write again. Well, my mom, sent me a message and said, maybe I should start writing on it again, and it felt right. So here I go again. My goal is to write on here once a week. Crossing my fingers and toes that that's not too much of a stretch with my crazy busy life. 

So first off, the title of my post has a double meaning. The first of that being, we have moved and now reside in Virginia. Sometimes, I can't believe it, I always felt that I was meant to live somewhere else, but given who I married and my original divorce decree when I was a single mother, I thought maybe I was just crazy because leaving Texas just did not seem to be in the cards. We have been here for two years! It seems like so much longer because so much has happened and we have so many friends that I can't comprehend that it would all occur in such a short amount of time. 

How did we get here?!? First of all, I remember sitting in my sisters congregation in Idaho, and the person speaking digressed in the middle of his talk. He said, "I don't know why I'm sharing this, but I have always felt that no matter where I'm at in the world, and my family is moved because of my job a lot, that we are always accepted and have always found peace in our new surroundings because we had support due to being members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints". I am paraphrasing because it's been years since that happened, but it felt like he said that just for me, and it stuck in my brain. Around 4 years later I started to be really uncomfortable with where we lived. I loved the people and my neighborhood and the amenities it offered. I loved being so involved in the community that my kids had no anonymity. However, crime seemed to be on the rise which made me worry constantly. I also saw my kids struggling. One kid in particular seemed to be held back socially because of peers judging based on the past. Another one we couldn't keep track of because he would constantly run off to other people's houses without telling us, and with crime on the rise in the area, I was always worried about his safety. I started wistfully looking at properties to the north of us, hoping to convince my husband to move us further out of the city since he had started working remotely. At this time though his parents were still living, and getting close to the end of their lives. So it never was a reality or true push to move, just a dream. Fast forward those two years and both of his parents had passed away. Covid seclusion had ended in Texas and was moving on to the end in Virginia. My husband's company was in the process of changing hands when the CFO quit, and they wanted him to step up and be the CFO. He had stepped down years ago because at the time we had just moved his parents closer to us, and we didn't want to move to Virginia which would be necessary for him to remain the CFO. He brought me into his office prior to us leaving for a trip and asked me what I thought. I was blown away because that is a direction that I have never thought of moving in. We had no family in this direction except one cousin on my side that I don't have any contact with, and my husband's sister's family, and she would be 2 hours away. At the time, she and I had had some bad interactions over my mother-in-law, and I didn't know if that could be mended. I had only ever looked at moving west, somewhere close to mine or my husband's family. Yet when he asked, I remembered that feeling from that speaker talking about always feeling supported, and I knew that this was it, we were meant to go. It took a couple of antagonizing months to be sure that it was going to happen. But I'll never forget setting down as a family to discuss it. We had supposed that we would get a great deal of kick back from the kids because they had never lived any where else. However, they were excited, and I felt peaceful as we talked about it and resolved my daughters concerns (she was the only one that really had any worries). I looked at my husband and said, "it feels right". He agreed. So here we are. In the coming months I will share the many blessings that we've had since moving here. While we miss friends and family, we have come to love so many more here in Virginia. My mom is not happy that I have moved so far away and I don't think that she will ever forgive me for loving an area more than my birthplace, but I do. I love the weather and changing of the seasons here. I love the people, the diversity of our area, the history, the many outdoor places to go and enjoy the scenery, and the opportunities that this area has given us. This move has opened up a whole new chapter in our lives, and blessings are happening every day as a result!