I recently saw a photo that Sarah, a childhood friend of mind, had posted of a gorgeous landscape in Carlsbad, California on her Facebook account. Sarah and I grew up in Northwest Ohio, less than one mile from each other and we went from Kindergarten through Senior year together in this small farming community. After school, we even moved 600 miles away together to Southwest Missouri for adventure and work opportunities that our small-town-Ohio just didn’t have. We eventually parted our living quarter ways and she ended up in California and me in Tennessee, living lives so far away from where we’d grown up.
Now I wouldn’t necessarily trade my formative years in for something different, but a I sat and looked at this picture of hers on my computer, I couldn’t help but think about just how far the two of us have journeyed in our current lives… I’m so filled with gratitude and thankfulness for the places I’ve been, for the people I’ve met along the way and the adventures that surrounded me in the process! My initial leaving of my small hometown with Sarah and I listening to Billy Joel cassette tapes on the 12 hour drive to Missouri had us both with butterflies in our stomach but the excitement outweighed the anxiety that we “should have” felt in taking on such a big adventure.
Being a Mom of two daughters, I am quite certain that the day will come when they decide to venture out into the vastness of the world and potentially want to dive into those same types of opportunities that Sarah and I did. I’m sure I’ll cry when they leave, but I’ll know and trust that their lives are for THEIR living and I’ve done the best job I could in raising them to that point… so I’ll phone my friend Sarah after I’ve dried my tears and we’ll laugh about our antics and our interesting move out west…. then I’ll hop in the car or on the phone to visit my daughters on my own, new adventure once again!
