About this time last year I was spending way too much time putting on cute clothes and doing my makeup only to immediately sweat it off at a football stadium surrounded by thousands of people.
And I’m typing this in 60 degree weather (!) in a mask on the lawn of a too-empty college campus in a tiny town in Virginia.
Life is CRAZY!
I’ve lived in Blacksburg for over 2 months now, and it frankly still feels a little like a long vacation. It feels like I’ll come back to my normal life sometime soon, where I go to the State Fair and eat a corn dog and drive on flat roads in lots of traffic and maybe get to wear a sweater before Thanksgiving.
I will try to sum up my scrambly emotions into this single post, but it is probably both summed up in a sentence and also able to fill every journal I painstakedly brought with me and lined on my shelves to remind me of the person who made it here.
These two months have been uncomfortable and new and honestly, just really, really hard.
Homesickness first hit me like a train last summer at camp, and ever since then, I’ve had a strange anxiety around being away from the people and places that feel like home.
Now, my homesickness either feels nonexistent or it feels like a loud, angry rainstorm outside my window. It feels like mourning the familiarity of people and places that know you inside and out.
I have felt uprooted and alone. I’ve questioned my purpose here and if I made the right decision. I’ve wanted to get in my car and drive 15 hours home. I don’t want to sugar coat it, I have definitely struggled and am continuing to struggle.
Yet there has also been so much good in the midst of pain and discomfort and change.
I feel thankful to do work and learn things that bring me excitement and that fuel my passions.
In these past two months, I have started a completely new job, started a master’s program I knew next to nothing about (Kahn academy also deserves a second place shout-out for this one), failed a lot and made a lot of mistakes and asked a lot of questions, yet also somehow have made friends and opened up and opened my eyes to the beauty and goodness around me.
This time has also been marked by a lot of me on my knees in simple awe that God brought me here.
There’s a line in a song I love by Kari Jobe (“The Garden”) that says:
“And I will see, your faithfulness in all of the green”
And even though she was definitely not talking about the tree-covered Appalachian mountains I drive through every day, I see the Lord’s faithfulness to me every single day through this place.
I see the quiet, powerful, perfectly on time, answered prayer of a girl in high school who dreamed of somewhere new and unknown where the leaves change (and had no clue what she was getting herself into!).
I see the ways that in the past 3 years of undergrad The Lord slowly but surely formed me, stretched me, and grew me into someone who is more rooted in His faithfulness and love, and more sure that she is able to do hard things.
I could write a completely different post listing out all of the ways I see the Lord’s hand in making me the kind of person who picks up and moves to the east coast and still not do His provision justice.
And I praise God now and give Him all the glory for getting me this far.
Just in these past weeks, I am starting to see the roots beginning to grow, and I feel my soul start to settle, and I feel my heart start to let its guard down.
I feel welcomed, loved, worthy, capable, and excited for the future because of where I am right now, and because of the faithful and loving God who brought me here.
I totally get the homesickness. We went from East coast to Texas and it has been so hard for us not having all of the things that feel strange and foreign to you. It’s weird how where we grow up feels so comforting. I miss changing leaves and mountains so much! And I miss the family and friends back home. But have also seen so much blessing in our time away from home. This period of time has left it’s stamp on me for sure. I pray you find purpose in the season you are in right now.