to look forward.

I am finding myself at a familiar place, full of hope and idealism, preparing to journey out of one place and into another. In the summer of two-thousand and five, I hugged my parents goodbye, hopped into my red Stratus with my cousin Sarah, and embraced my idealism and wandering spirit to live somewhere else, while Kelly Clarkson's "Breakaway" played through my life's speakers.

I had finished college, and been congratulated by so many at attaining my degree. This was perplexing to me. I hadn't ever really aspired to anything, even while accumulating an immense amount of debt and spending hours studying, reading, procrastinating and stressing to finish. There were just things people did, and smart popular people that wanted to make a lot of friends and prepare a future for themselves went to college and earned a degree. If these were the possible end results of attaining a bachelors degree, sign me up. I did make the friends, I received the official framable certificate upon crossing that stage, and I most definitely learned a lot about a lot of things, as well as myself. But enlightenment into my future found it's way through halls and corridors of John Brown University without finding me.

What was left: An idealistic and seemingly strong and adventurous twenty-two year old still trying to make her way out of the bleakness of the depression that frequented the halls and corridors she did pass through in college.

I remember turning into Hunter's Ridge, the apartment complex that would be so much more than where I rested my head for the next thirteen months. I turned my right blinker on with excitement and anticipation and forgetfulness. When uprooting oneself and forcefully taking apart all of the things that are known so well for so long, it's easy to forget about the less desirables. My dad was always there to remind me that "wherever I go, I will be the first one to arrive." I knew this, but the hope that the me that arrived in Florida would be a better version of myself than the one that left? It plagued me. Though this feeling was rooted in hope, it was still a plague because it was unrealistic. It is my belief that there are raw and difficult life experiences we must live through, full of wrong turns and dirty streets, often in the midst of goodness, before we can become a better version of ourselves. Change of location is often idyllic, but it's not ever enough.

It was a year plus one month I do not wish to relive, but also, wouldn't undo. It was also a year and one month that I was more than ready to leave behind. For the first time that I could remember, I felt an ache to go backwards and return to the familiarity and ease of home. Against my usual forward momentum and innate "I can do it by myself" attitude, I payed a ridiculous amount of money to get out of my lease early, repacked all of my belongings into the same red dodge stratus, cried tears of guilt at leaving my brother behind, and made the journey back west with Pamela, a friend like no other.

Waiting for me in Oklahoma was a happy mother, a bed with clean sheets, a kitten named Murray, and looming faith questions that had began to fester and ferment in my heart and head while wading through murky Florida water. This painful doubt left such an odor that only grew more potent and debilitating in the stillness and monotony of home.

I walked into the warmth of the Sawyer's home for the first time with a social sheepishness rooted in my previous year of sadness and the heaviness of doubt. I was welcomed with nonchalance, as if, of course, I belonged there. It wasn't until after returning to this space a few more times that I marveled at this couples innate inclination to hospitality, and began to be amazed at how little effort they had to put forth to make a heavy soul feel welcome, like they belong. Not only did they welcome my person, but they also welcomed, with equally open arms, my questions. I drove home that March evening, in the red dodge stratus, a much lighter version of myself. The questions were still there, and I was still desperately in need of answers. But the space this couple and this group gave me to ask them was more than adequate to alleviate the painful part of the weight.

Back to the present: This weekend for me held an immeasurable amount of fun. Great conversation, new friends made, other friendships made stronger, wine, dancing until two in the morning, philly-cheese-steaks at three, and work just a few hours later. My nickname as a little girl? Mary-go-Jones. I want to do it all for as long as I can while having as much fun as possible. I don't neglect my responsibilities, I just set them aside until they must be attended to. Going to sleep at four only to wake at seven to serve for seven hours was painful. Taking an hour and a half long nap was almost as painful as not taking a nap at all. The nap would have been longer, had I not needed to fit a three mile run in before leaving to attend the same group at the Sawyer's I walked into three years before. I rushed out the door already late, and still in need of bread. I was awake and present because of the adrenaline of the rush...From here to there quickly after doing this that was immediately followed by that...So the heaviness of fatigue, and the weight of not being able to do anything about it walked with me up the steps of their porch, helping me raise my weighty hand to twist the gold knob on their cool green door.

And then it opened, almost magically, and the light of their home literally enveloped me in ease, as did the smiles that greeted me at the door. A few steps further, and there was Amy in her apron, a warm and comforting soup simmering on the stove, and the inevitability of thoughtful, humorous, and stimulating conversation awaiting me with many of the people I love most in the world, that would likely begin shortly after I took my soup filled seat. The effortless hospitality I had experienced three years before once again greeted my weary body, and filled me up in a way I had forgotten it could.

I marveled at this goodness at the end of the evening, and contrasted it with the excitement of the hope and idealism I mentioned back there, in the beginning of all of these words. It seems that I am possibly missing the point by choosing to leave all of this behind, especially since the year of idealism lived out in Florida turned out to be enveloped in an excessive amount of disappointment. Despite that year, or, possibly because of that year, idealism remains.

I sat, full of contentment, in the Sawyer's creaky wooden chair thinking to myself that if these are the kind of people and experiences that I find when I open myself up to change, how can I not leave, with idealistic hopes of finding so much more of this?