One Year

It is so strange that a year ago this week the La Vida Family was making its trek from Arizona to North Carolina on the most recent of cross country moves.

Remember the guitar playing packing man? Or what I chose to assert my control over  had to do   immediately upon arrival?

Good times.

Its funny how looking back can bring memories in which the tough parts are shaded so only the happiest parts shine through.

I was looking through the archives trying to figure out what day exactly we had landed here in God's Country, and I was thinking about all the expectations I had upon my arrival.

I had plans.

Big plans.

I thought for sure I would get here and slide-on into life as it had been before.

Only things had changed.

Instead of teaching music three mornings a week. I was teaching full time in my dining-room-turned-school-house.

Instead of having time for the gym, and throwing lunches with beautifully set tables and sewing, or baking, and blogging, I was always playing catch-up. Never being able to get one step ahead.

I didn't feel like myself.

I was fighting against all that was different and new, but until recently I hadn't realized it.

Back in the day, when The Mister and I left for our first duty station 13 years ago, I was given a great piece of advice from a woman I greatly admired. She said, "Kellie, it takes a full year to get settled when you move somewhere new."

I have kept that little bit of advice in my pocket each time we have moved.

Every time I got lost. Every time I had to find a new doctor. Every time I had to memorize a new grocery store. Or meet a new friend. Or feel like I had no order in my life, I would remember that a year from now, all this crazy newness will feel like order again.


I didn't expect that to happen when I moved back to North Carolina. After all I was moving right back to the same neighborhood. The same street. The same house.

It should have been the same!

But it wasn't.

And now, sitting one year away, I'm glad.

Its different, but its so much better than what my limited vision could see.

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes....

One year.

Fully lived, one blessed change at a time, and I lived to tell about it.

Life is good.