Selling My Soul to the Midwest: Three Years Later

Three Years--The Wildest Stretch of My Life thus Far:

Three Years.

Seven Jobs. Two States.

Two Career Changes.

One Global Health Crisis.

One Shaved Head.

One Consistent Beard.

One Case of Frostbite.

Two Vehicles.

Two Holidays Spent with New Family.

Two New Driver’s Licenses.

Two Musical Festivals.

Two Vehicle Breakdowns.

Three Trashed Pairs of Running Shoes.

Three Backcountry Pack Trips.

Three XC State Finals.

Four Free Pieces of Furniture Acquired.

Four New Tattoos (Sorry Mom…).

Five Different Mailing Addresses.

Five Pints of Blood Donated.

Six Completed Journals.

Seven Honest Conversations.

Eight Honorary Nieces and Nephews.

Eight Defaced Books.

Fifteen Sunburns

Thirty-Seven Zoom Calls.

Forty-Eight Replaced Electrical Ballasts.

Eighty-Eight Firework Cakes Ignited.

Three hundred forty-three students.

Two Hundred, Ten Restless Nights.

Two Hundred Seventy-Six Craft IPA’s Savored (and a few PBR’s in there).

One Thousand, Three Hundred, Eighty-Two Cups of Coffee.

One Thousand, Nine Hundred, Eighteen Gourmet Burgers Assembled.

Fourteen Hundred Thirty-Two Miles Run.

Twenty Nine thousand Five, Hundred Fifty-Six Miles Driven.

Countless New Relationships, Thousands of Frustrating Prayers, and Hundreds of Thousands of Other Moments Later, we make it to a New Year.

January 1st of 2020 was the Day I Moved to Michigan.

I didn’t know what to expect when I took a Recreation Ministry Job at Timber Wolf Lake Younglife Camp. A camp located thirteen hundred miles away from my closest family members. Never would I anticipate that I would lose that same position and place of residency five short months later due to a global pandemic. Never would I have thought that I would stay in the Midwest after losing that job. Never would I believe that one hard conversation shared over a bottle of bourbon, hours after being given the news that I’d be laid off—would change the course and direction of my life. Never would I know the crazy journey that it would bring me into.

I stayed in Michigan and couch crashed with some wonderful people, and took a job I hated at a Home Improvement store to try and pay the bills. I worked in a food truck, became a long-term substitute teacher, worked as a virtual student facilitator, taught some summer school classes, worked seasonally again at Timber Wolf, eventually got a full time teaching gig, built a SEL Class from the ground up, helped run some Outdoor Education programming, and have slowly found my place and role in a school. Schools were ironically a place of employment, that while in college I swore I Never work in.

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In the last three years: I took countless opportunities, took some substantial risks, had conversations with people that I believed I would Never have, Learned what family actually can look like, chased a lots of ambitious dreams, traveled to some neat places, learned about my desperate need for human connection, began to finally stand up for myself, realized what people are actually in my corner, hugged lots of dogs (and occasionally their owners), cheered on my students, was challenged my way of thinking, began truly trusting in a Faithful Creator, and ultimately realized that things are out of my control—and slowly accepting that that’s okay.

Be careful of when you say that “You’ll Never Do Something” because life has this inauspicious and intrinsic way of inviting you into the places, spaces and moments, when you say that all too common phrase. There are things in that last three years that I swore I’d Never do—that have actually come to be incredibly significant parts of my life story. Parts of my story, and moments that I wouldn’t trade for anything. It has made me wonder how many moments each and every one of us missed by living in that sense of internal denial; rather than embracing the adventure that is right in front of us, when we switch from saying Never to saying Possibly.

As we celebrate a New Year, recognize the days of small beginnings, because things can so drastically and positively change in an instant. One small decision can detrimentally change the course of life you are pursing.

The True question this time of year we must ask ourselves is: by saying Never, what are we hindering ourselves from experiencing?

Hold Fast into 2023 Friends.