Full Circle

It's funny how God has a plan for you. You may not realize or know it right away, but in time you will find it . . . and you will end up right where you need to be.

For a long time I was sure that I wanted to get out of this town. When I graduated from high school I wanted to go to a college in a different city. I told myself that I would get a better education there and would experience all that college life had to offer. So I stayed put my first year with the intentions of transferring the next . . . I graduated from UWSP three years later.

Shortly after that I was married and then it was time to start "real" life. Time to find a permanent job and start acting like a grown up. Here's my chance . . . I thought . . . my chance to move away and start my life as a wife and career woman in a new place . . .

Brian and I packed up our apartment and headed 25 miles away to the nice quiet village of Iola. Life was good . . . it was nice to have distance yet be close enough that we could easily make the trip home and back in one day. But, the rolling country hills of Iola just never felt like home. Home was always somewhere else . . . but where?

So, we decided toying with the idea of moving . . . let's just pick a place . . . we could finally move to a bigger city . . . more job opportunities for me, more diversity for our children. Yet when the time came to make that decision . . . I couldn't make it. In my head I was longing to leave . . . yet in my heart I knew where "home" to me really was.

Brian finally approached me one day and said . . . "you can't move away can you?" He was right. I knew he could move and it wouldn't bother him at all, but me . . . I couldn't do it. For a long time I felt disgusted with myself. Why did I need my family so much? What was my attachment to this stinking city?

I finally realized that it had nothing to do with me needing anything . . . it was about wanting something. I wanted to be near my family, because that is where home was - wherever they were.

So, here we are . . . I am a townie . . . and I couldn't be happier. I love looking out my window and seeing my parents' car pull into the driveway, I love playing in the yard and seeing my grandparents drive by as they go on their daily ride, I love being able to walk to my parents house on a whim . . . this is home . . . it always will be.

Last week we took Kadin to his official kindergarten orientation. He will be attending the very school I did when I was his age. As I went on a tour of the school I saw all the things I remembered from when I was little . . . it was awesome to think that Kadin will be experiencing those same things in a few short months.

Twenty-six years ago my mom dropped off a sniffly, terrified little girl through the doors of that school. Twenty-six years later that terrified little girl will be dropping off her son through those same doors.

It's astounding how life comes full circle . . .