Wrangler Dani

(Note from Dani – Katie is one of my dear friends from ACU, and she is a talented writer with an old soul, a sweet spirit and a an almost obsessive love of tea. Enjoy her meditation on new places today as I wander through a new place myself. 🙂 )

So I’m totally jealous of Dani’s rad vacation this week – I love, love, love D.C. and all its amazing sights, and Williamsburg is a swoon-worthy destination for sure. But while part of me sighs with envy, another part is content to be just where I am. For the past two months, my hubs and I have been settling into our new home in Boston. As a couple of Texans who’d only visited Boston once before moving here, we had – and have – a LOT to discover. Just after Jeremiah got the job offer in June, we traveled to Houston for a wedding, and stayed with Jon, my best friend from high school and a voice of wisdom in my life for about 15 years now.

We were weighing the pros and cons of a move, and agonizing over whether to leave Abilene – where we’d met, gone to college, put down deep roots and formed a solid, loving community. Where we’d lived for eight years, where our finances were secure, where we had family. And Jon said something I’ll never forget.

Okay, so I can’t remember the exact wording. But the gist of it was something like this. When weighing major life decisions, he asks himself: Will this decision help me expand the cast of characters in my life? Don’t I want to discover new places and people to add to my story? Is my life complete, just the way it is now? Or will this change (whatever it might be) open up new scenes for me, stretch me and challenge me, and introduce me to people who need to be part of my story – and whose stories I need to be part of?

Something clicked for me as Jon talked about characters and stories, and I knew: Boston was the next exciting chapter in my (and our) story. I loved our life in Abilene, but the truth was, we’d been idling for several months. We felt restless, like it was time to move on – we just didn’t know where yet. We’d had several false starts, but they all came to nothing, and frankly, none of them felt right. Nothing felt right until Boston – and it felt, and feels, like our next great adventure. I’m loving all the things you might expect me to love about Boston: rich history, delicious clam chowder, tons of cultural opportunities, the excitement of exploring a big city.

But I’m also loving getting to know the cast of characters in this chapter of my story. They range from our sweet landlords, an Italian couple in their seventies who live downstairs, to our good friends Abigail and Nate, who moved up here from Abilene just before we did. They include people from half a dozen nations, born-and-raised New Englanders, and transplants like us. And they’re all a part of my story. And now, since I live here, I’m a part of theirs. Vacations are fascinating, it’s true, and even short trips can change your life (one week in London when I was sixteen led to a semester in Oxford and then an entire master’s degree there, for example).

But living in a new place is an entirely different breadth and depth of adventure. I’m thrilled to be writing this chapter of my story in Boston, and I can’t wait to see what – and who – happens next.