“To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.” Henri Bergson
Changes are never easy. Some are harder than others. Most of the times we go through them kicking and screaming. Last year, I reluctantly packed all our stuff and moved to Alabama, and within a month it became one of my favorite places with some of my favorite people. I was ready to settle, I was ready to call it home. But Heavenly Father had different plans for us. Another change, another move, another summer packing, and this time, I packed all our stuff, not kicking and screaming, but sad and scared. We were moving to Utah!
One of the things that me and my husband have in common was our total desire of living everywhere in the US but Utah! We always wonder why our friends were moving to Utah.
But, to change is to mature, or so they say. We have been in Utah for about five months now and it has been a very challenging adventure. The kind of adventure that either breaks you or makes you better. Challenge number one, finding a house! We were already driving to Utah and didn’t know where we were going to live. Until the heavens opened and showed us this dreamy “pink” house. It literally looked like something taken from a fairy tale or a Barbie movie. It was a crazy blessing! It was a hard change though because I really loved my house in Alabama, I loved our neighbors, I loved the wooden floors, the big windows, the spacious hallway, it was by far my favorite house. Nothing was good enough here in Utah after living in that house, until we came upon the “pink” house, and I realized how this change can help me appreciate other things like the freakishly beautiful view of the mountains right from our new backyard, the very well developed veggie garden than gave tomatoes to make salsa for an entire block of neighbors! The new neighbors whose kids felt right at home once they met my daughters and now come in our house like they are our own children, the weirdness of living in a house where once in a while strangers come to see if they can take pictures at because it is a famous house in this town (super crazy).
We came to Utah the last day of the month at 3 in the morning, slept for a few hours and got up to go to our new jobs! Challenge number 2, getting use to a new job. It turned out that the distances from our new jobs to the town in Utah we thought would be nice to live at were longer and more tedious than we calculated back in Alabama. Once we started getting into the routine of driving to work we realized how much longer it takes to get from our new home to our new jobs and the stressed of traffic started setting in our shoulders. I have realized how much more angry I was the first weeks due to that and how much I have changed my perspective from getting there versus enjoying my drive to work. The first month or so, I was so stressed with the traffic, the drivers, the following the map, the time, etc, etc, that I got to my destination with stiffed shoulders and a frown on my face. But to exists is to change, and I needed to happily exists in my new environment without ending in the Psych Ward. So, I changed, I changed my attitude, I started listening to uplifting things while driving, paying attention to the things around me, amazing myself everyday with the beauty of the mountains, which by the way, I think it is the cause of so many accidents in this highway, it is mesmerizing!
We have had other challenges, of course, but the most important thing of this change is that it is helping me become stronger, resilient and more appreciative of the small things that make me really happy!
