Blooming into a cactus

We leave for Las Vegas in two weeks. And my heart is aching. 

I don't want to go. It's not what I want. I know it's just for the summer and we'll be back in August. But after August there will come next Spring, when Brandon finishes school and we have a job offer somewhere, possibly in Vegas. And then we won't be back. We'll be gone for good. And I hate that. That's why this summer is so hard. Because it may be temporary but it's sneak peak at the not so temporary. And I'm pretty sure the not so temporary doesn't include Tennessee, except for leaving it.

 It's hard to explain what it is that I love so much about it here. I think it's a million things. It's that I had my first child here. I became a mother here. The park up the street is where I walked when I was in labor. 

We struggled through law school here. We have grown so much through that struggle. Personally and together in our marriage. 

We made the most amazing friends here. Friends that become family and make you feel whole. Friends that you need and they need you. And it feels so nice to be needed. My sister and her family live here and I adore that. I'm only twelve minutes away. That'll never happen again.

 It's so amazingly beautiful here. The kind of beautiful you can't imagine unless you've experienced it. The weather is my kind of perfect. The spring is beyond words, I feel close to heaven on a sunny spring day here. I feel Heavenly Father's love for me through nature and beautiful days. Both abound here. I feel like He sends those days just for me. I want Jackson to grow up running around in a backyard full of grass and nature. I want him to climb trees. I want to BBQ in the backyard during the summer. None of that happens in Vegas. I know because there is no grass to sit in and no trees to climb and it's too hot to be outside in the summer. 

I became who I am right now here. What if that all goes away when I leave? What if I take more steps back than I do forward? People are different in the South than they are out West. I grew up out West and I pretty much only knew white Christians. I don't want that. I want to be surrounded by people who are different than me. I want to be pushed to see things differently than is comfortable for me. I especially want Jackson to grow up with people who are different from him. I want him to learn to be truly kind. Not just to his friends at a play date, because that's easy, but kind to people with different beliefs or colored skin or a different kind of family than ours. I want him to see people who are poor and homeless and decide to be kind and to share. (I know that there are poor and homeless people out West, maybe it's just that it's more obvious to me here, or that we don't live in a super nice part of town because we are poor students :)

I'm coming back to how beautiful it is here. I can't adequately express it but I want to keep trying. My heart feels at peace when I look outside here. I feel calm. And I often struggle to feel calm. I've made a lot of growth in that area of my life since moving here. Again, what if I lose that when I leave? 

"Bloom where you are planted". That saying was engraved in my head as a girl growing up by my mother. I know it's true. I know it's an eternal truth. And I will. I will bloom in the sandy, dry, hot, desert, darnit it all, I will. But it will be hard. And it was easy here. Here in Tennessee it was easy to bloom into a full and vibrant flower. 

Maybe when I bloom in Vegas I'll be a cactus. Cactus bloom every spring. They are hardy and strong. It's pretty amazing that they stay green in the desert. Maybe I do want to be a cactus after all.