Living away from home and family

A friend of mine recently discussed in her blog the fears she has about potentially moving with her spouse and child away from her family and hometown to pursue work in another part of the country.  It made me think about the almost three years Richard and I have spent here in Washington, away from all our family, and the things I have learned and appreciated.  Here is what I have found:

I love where I live.  Not the basement apartment so much-- still too many spiders.  But the Northwest.  I love Seattle.  I love the green.  I love the trees.  I love the lakes.  I love the temperature (just because I grew up in St. George does not mean that I loved 110 degree summers).  I love the forests and mountains and the sound.  I love the smell of the ocean.  I love how clean everything is and how well the people in this state protect the environment.  I love how pollution free it is up here.  I love that there is so much to do that I have to whittle the options down to just one or two each day.  There is an endless list for exploration.  It is the MOST beautiful place I have ever lived.

I love my spouse.  I didn't realize how little time I spent just with Richard until we moved here and we were all we had in terms of family.  Back in Utah, we had so many social engagements with friends and with family that evening alone with Richard were few and far between.  I kept our calendar hopping in Utah, and life really slowed down for us when we moved here to Washington.  We had no friends, we had no family, no ready made social scene that we could slip into.  So we spent time together.  We planned outings and date nights.  We talked and we clung together while we adjusted to this new world of ours.  And I found that I really loved the guy I was married to-- that I really looked forward to the time he came home from work each day.  And I found (most shocking of all) that I actually preferred spending time just with him and Anna, to having a whole bunch of friends over for a party.

I am comfortable with who I am up here.  One of my strangest realizations when we moved up here to Washington was that it fit me!  As I met the women here and developed my own social circle of young moms, this thought kept repeating itself in my head: "These are my people!"  The women I have met up here go running at 5 am on Saturdays and run marathons and go hiking and talk about books and art.  They have museum memberships.  No one that I know makes their own clothes or their children's clothes or has a shop on Etsy.  Their houses are not pristinely decorated with color-coordinated items.  The women I love here wear minimal make-up, jeans and T-shirts, and most of them have hair color that is pretty close to the one they were born with.  Yes, there is the occasional mom that goes above and beyond with her children's birthdays, and the one that always looks really put-together.  And although most of the women here have mastered the art of the boot (I certainly haven't!), overall, I feel like these women are MY women.  In fact,  if/when we ever move back to Utah, I have actually expressed the fear to Richard that I wouldn't fit in-- despite the fact that I lived the first 28 years of my life there.

I am needed at church!  Both Richard and I feel so essential to our church here.  We know that the days we are not there, they miss us.  We know that we filled a hole when we moved in, and when we leave there will be a space there.  We also have the sense that we have really done some good for our ward-- that we have made it better by the work we have accomplished here.  We have been blessed to be involved in a lot of missionary work and we actually know the missionaries.  I have found that I go to church now for a spiritual experience and not just to see friends.

So don't worry if life takes you away from your home for awhile-- you will find it wherever you go!  And you may have the greatest adventure in the meantime!!