“In Lynchburg, Virginia, home of Liberty University and just an hour away from my own alma mater, there are always Paneras and Starbucks full of Baptists fresh from Bible Study...zipped snugly into their North Face jackets and so surely into their faith. The leaves have changed color and the air is crisp and chilly and smells like campfires in that grey morning fog and when I am home for Thanksgiving, I pass through on my way to the J.Crew Factory store and even now, I will feel just a little bit jealous of them.”

I wrote this short essay about fall and faith for The Equals Record three years ago and I just came across it again this weekend. I'm so thankful for blogging--it's strange and wonderful to have this little snapshot of me in Minneapolis, still thinking about the things I thought about in Charlotte and now California.

And I needed this reminder from my past self: I feel overwhelmed with the possibilities, and grateful that, even when it's hard, I didn't stay in one place forever.

Read the full piece here.

If Memorial Day is the beginning of summer and Labor Day is the end of it, then the 4th of July is the point at which I start thinking about autumn. I daydream about hot lattes in warm mugs, about new jeans and smart, structured jackets and that crisp smell of a cool morning.

I didn't know I didn't like summer until a few years ago--probably when we moved back to the Southeast from Minnesota. Growing up in Virginia, I understood and even felt the magic of summer every year--the muggy mornings, cicadas chirping away in the distance, fireflies flickering in the early evening. My brother and I used to set off into the streets of our suburban neighborhood for giant games of flashlight tag with our summer friends--the kids who we didn't go to school with but were inseparable from every summer vacation. No school, no worries, just pools and sprinklers and popsicles all day. I get it.

But this weekend Rob was home and we did something we don't usually do--we went clothes shopping. He and I will occasionally buy ourselves a new shirt or pair of shoes here and there, but it was a holiday weekend and there were sales and we're moving to California, so we basically bought ourselves a new wardrobe for the Bay Area. 

I've been feeling so up and down about the prospect of moving across the country, but this weekend made me feel even more hopeful than I have before. Maybe it was sweating through upper 90-degree afternoons, or maybe it was coming to the realization that I'm going to need more jeans and a new jacket for fall in California. A lot of it was just being reunited with Rob for a long weekend. But I think most of it is that part of me that always comes around this time of year--the one who doesn't want to wish the summer away, but can't seem to help it.

I am learning, a little bit more every day, to just be. That it's okay to be excited for the future, and sometimes it's okay to dread it a little bit too. Summer is here. There are friends to laugh with and rosé to drink. The mosquitos will bite. But fireflies will flicker; and big, fat, pink peonies will gloriously open up in the vase you place by the kitchen sink. 

And autumn will come around eventually.

This weekend I was in Virginia for my cousin's graduation from Roanoke Catholic.

I graduated from the same school ten whole years ago. I knew it had been that long, but it didn't really seem true until I was looking at the program for the ceremony and saw "Class of 2016" written on the front. Ten years! A full decade. What's most amazing to me about that isn't the time that has passed, but how easily it is to remember exactly how I felt back then.

Like anything was possible, but not really in an adventurous way. I grew up in Roanoke and loved my church and my school and was only going two hours away for college. I had been so predictable for so long, and I still wasn't sure if I wanted to be the same person or a different one.

I remember the exact dress I wore, and how my mom bought it for me when we were on vacation earlier that spring. I don't remember where we were but it was a gorgeous linen sundress that fit perfectly and made me feel like a grown-up--it's one of the few pieces of my wardrobe that I haven't gotten rid of over the years. The salesperson checking us out overheard us talking about graduation and asked me if I was excited about high school. I balked, wondering how young I actually looked as I told her that I was graduating from high school, not 8th grade.

I was dating someone but I was still in love with my ex-boyfriend, and both relationships were messy and confusing. I broke up with the boyfriend that summer before leaving for Longwood, and I remember feeling like I just needed to move on and I'd figure everything else out as soon as the fall semester started.

I tried, but there was a lot to figure out. So many new freedoms that I wasn't used to. My friend Wes texted me soon after I arrived on campus that first year and asked if I wanted to go to the park. "The park?" I replied, "It's 10 PM." He laughed at my surprise and we went to the park and sat on the swings, talking for hours, which quickly became a tradition of ours. It took me months to wear flip-flops to class, and I never did muster up the courage to chew gum in an academic building.

As I sat there in the church last Saturday, watching the excited faces of a class of 17 and 18 year-olds, I couldn't help but be astonished at how different my life is now than I thought it would be then. The friends I thought I'd know forever, the church I believed I'd always be a part of, the family business I would manage with my parents.

I didn't know that I would move so much, or that I would marry an incredibly tall, incredibly kind man who knows exactly who I am and makes me feel like I'm enough for him every single day (I think at the time I must have believed that the men--boys--in your life either drove you crazy or made you cry). I didn't know that I would battle anxiety with every transition I encountered in my life, or, more importantly, that when it comes you don't have to suffer silently through it without help. I didn't know that I'd make friends in college who would stick with me into adulthood, even when you've fallen out and think it's over.

And I didn't know that I'd one day be so comfortable with myself. Apparently ten years is enough time to grow up and become who you're really supposed to be.

I wouldn't change a thing.