The Big Move...

My life.  In a ten foot UHaul.



It's official.  I'm baaaaaaaaack! (said in the voice of that creepy little girl in the movie Poltergiest).  I'm back in the Mountain State for now.

I'm definitely still adjusting...with a capital DEF.  It hasn't fully hit me yet.  I still feel like I am on a long weekend in WV.  However, unlike a long weekend, all of my belongings are stuffed into my parent's garage and also in various closets.

My shoe collection.  My babies. :)

Technically, I know I quit my job, left my friends and my bro, and packed up my life in a 10 foot UHaul and moved it through snow covered mountains; but it still feels like tomorrow I am going to wake up to my extraordinarily annoying alarm that blares Callipso music and not remember anything else until I find myself sitting in front of my computer in my office, checking my voicemails and emails with a cup of coffee I make in my non-Biomedical engineering approved (secrets out!) mini coffee pot.  But I'm not.  Tomorrow, just like today, I'm going to wake up at my parent's house by the sound of them making breakfast, watching the news, and talking to the dog.  A few days from  now I might be resting my head at someone's else's house.  And then next week, another.  Oh, the life of a nomad.
My last week in DC was hard, but at the same time...not hard.

One of the best moments of the week was the night before I moved.  My best friend Wajh and I grabbed some sushi  and a bottle of wine from Whole Foods after work and had full intentions of coming back to my place to pack and clean.  But instead, we stayed up until midnight looking at pictures in my photos albums,  telling new stories, and re-telling old ones.  By the end of the evening we found ourselves sitting on my kitchen floor encouraging and reassuring each other.  

What we have realized over the years is that trusting in God is all we really have.  Nothing is a guarantee no matter how hard we work, try to protect ourselves, or try to plot and plan to make things work out the way we want.  God doesn't fit in a box and His plans are bigger and better than anything we could ever come up with.  That fact is both extremely comforting and extremely uncomfortable.  We love to think we have control.  But we don't.  Luck for us, God speaks to His children.  He guides us.  His sheep will know His voice (John 10:27 paraphrase).  All we have to do...is listen. 

The morning of my move, Wajh had to work so she wasn't there to help carry my bags and bags of shoes or my library of books.  But, she ended up helping me more than I could have imaginged.  She sent me this picture:

 When she went to work, she saw this sign at the hospital and took a pic and sent it to me.  This gives me hope.  Hope that I am doing the right thing.  Pursing your dreams is one of the hardest things you can ever do.  There will be tons of people telling you one way or another that you can't do it, or that you are aiming too high, or tell you stories of their failed dreams.  People will want you to hold on the side of the pool instead of swimming out into the deep end.   It's not because people are mean or evil; it's because they want to protect you.  They don't want you to get hurt or go through hardships.  Or it could be that if you succeed at your dream, then that means that they might be able to succeed at theirs.  And to find out, they will also have to let go of things they are comfortable with and tread water in the deep end.  And it's not just other people that will be telling me to play it safe.  I'll be telling myself to do so as well. 

It's a familiar voice.  The one that whispers to me that I'm crazy, or I can't do this, or that I won't find the money to go to school, or that I'm not going to make the right decisions, or that I will end up stuck somewhere in another job I hate just to get by, etc.  This voice has kept me from my dreams all of my life.  I'm not strong enough to fight against all of the fear and opinions of others; but Jesus is.  He is the one that is telling me that I can do ANYTHING.  He is telling me that this is JUST THE BEGINNING of all the miracles that I am about to witness.  He is telling me that if I trust in Him I will have so much LOVE, WISDOM, PEACE, and HAPPINESS that it won't be able to stop it from overflowing from me and into the lives of those around me.  His voice is my resting place.   His love is all I need. 

Today, I am having a hard time with all this.  I feel overwhelmed.  I don't have a plan.  I don't know what to do first. I don't know what to expect in the days to come.

I feel like I am supposed to figure this all out, like...today...so that everyone can just relax.

I don't have an answer to the questions, "What are you gonna do?" or "Where are you gonna work?" or "When are you gonna work?" or "Where will you go to school?"  or "How will you pay for school along with the money you already owe!?" or "What do you want for lunch?"

I can't even decide on lunch, people!

Everyone has an opinion or some advice about what to do about all of it; except me.  I feel like my job for now is to sit at the feet of my Savior and listen.  Not only does this make me uncomfortable, but it also makes the people around me uncomfortable.  Everyone has something for me to do in order to get my new life on it's way.  A list of responsible things that grown ups do when they quit their job and don't have any clear direction on what to do next.  But something in me isn't allowing me to do these responsible grown up things just yet.  Sitting and waiting is way harder to do than it would be for me to go out and get another job tomorrow.  Getting another job isn't going to be that hard.  Waiting on the Holy Spirit to guide me...is the hardest thing to do. 

Life is full of to-do lists and should-do lists and can't-do lists.  I want to throw out all of those lists and let Jesus, the One that Created me for a purpose, direct my steps. 

Am I scared as hell!???  You bet cha.  Big time.  If I allow myself to think about it for too long, my blood runs cold.   I don't want to let anyone down.  I've let people down before, and I don't want to ever do it again.  BUT (I like big BUTs and I cannot lie) I have to risk letting people down, and letting myself down, in order to go down the road less traveled; the one that Jesus promised us would be hard to find and even harder to stay on....BUT that would lead us to LIFE!!!

It was four years ago that I made a similiar transition in my life.  I was getting ready to get married and then three weeks beforehand I called it all off, quit my job, got back together with an ex-boyfriend, and moved to DC.  There were a lot of people that thought I was crazy.  My parents wondered aloud to me, "Kate, don't you ever want to be happy?  Why do you keep messing your life up!?"  I wondered the same things.   I wondered why I couldn't do anything right.  I wondered why I was such a royal mess up.  Looking back from where I am now, I see that even though all of that was extremely messy and seemed like a horrible failure; it was what needed to happen in order for me to really meet Jesus.  The real Jesus.  Not the Jesus I thought I knew.  Not the Jesus that I heard about in church...the few times I had gone.  Not the Jesus that I had constructed in my head.  The real Jesus. 

I met the living God.  Face-to-face.  He saved me.  He showed me that I am NOT a royal mess up, destined to be an unhappy wreck.  He showed me who I am in Him.  And now...I am willing to give everything I know, everything I own, and everything I hold onto for comfort  to Him.  I want for Him to take what little I have and multiply it so that I can help Him save other lost and empty souls like He saved mine.  If Jesus can take a few loaves of bread and feed thousands, then He can take what I have and do the same.  There will be times like today where I want to crawl in a cave and not come out until everything is all fixed and figured out.  But that's okay.  Change is hard.  If I've learned anything from living in DC, I've learned that I can do anything as long as I lean on Jesus.  I can't tell you how many times I was told something was impossible in my last job.  If I would have tried in my own strength, then I am sure it would have been impossible.  So I did the only thing I knew to do when all of my resources are exhausted and I need to make the impossible possible...I hit my knees and prayed.  Sometimes right in my office.  And there was not ONE TIME that Jesus didn't come through for me.  Not once did I have to say, "You're right.  That is impossible."  Even when I am scared, like today, I know my Savior is bigger than my fear.  I know that I will never have to utter the words, "You're right.  That is impossible." 

Sorry this is such a long post.  I've been writing it since yesterday.  My parent's computer is so slow that it keeps freezing up on me.  I asked my dad if they forgot to feed the hamster living inside it that keeps it running. :)  I got jokes!!!!!

I'll keep ya'll posted as I take each day one at a time.  I am believing for big things!!!! BIG big big!

Love,

Katie

Bailey has kept me entertained.  She thinks she's a human.