New Directions!
This book!
It's changing our lives.
It's opening our hearts.
And it changed this blog! From personal, private essays to this launch of a public account of how we're learning to belong where we are. And that's a long time coming!
For years, we thought we'd eventually return to China when our daughters finished high school. But the hubs first needed some solid experience in the states in his new profession. Finally, we considered that maybe full time in China wasn't the best option for us. At least not yet. Maybe not ever.
So we explored opportunities in Nevada and Montana, all the while dreaming about the Blue Ridge Mountains. Then a good door opened in Tucson, so we decided to keep dangling our keys in the Old Pueblo.
It's changing our lives.
It's opening our hearts.
And it changed this blog! From personal, private essays to this launch of a public account of how we're learning to belong where we are. And that's a long time coming!
For years, we thought we'd eventually return to China when our daughters finished high school. But the hubs first needed some solid experience in the states in his new profession. Finally, we considered that maybe full time in China wasn't the best option for us. At least not yet. Maybe not ever.
So we explored opportunities in Nevada and Montana, all the while dreaming about the Blue Ridge Mountains. Then a good door opened in Tucson, so we decided to keep dangling our keys in the Old Pueblo.
But that was not to be!
Although our hearts are still fully vested in missions, orphans and China, the compass recently led us to do life in the Albuquerque area. We dearly love family here, but it's a place we had NEVER wanted to live. EVER. We'd both resided in NM before, so we knew ABQ wasn't our cup of tea or, so to speak, our slice of chile. (And, yeah, we're old enough to know better than to tell God where or what we DON'T want!)
New Romance? Are we enchanted yet?
After seven months of working out this move, we are FINALLY together in the Land of Enchantment! At least four of us are.
Just before moving here, I was trying to figure out how we would possibly EVER learn to like this new spoke in the road. Steve loves his new job, and it's fabulous to live near extended family. It also helps that I have my own friends who had moved from their hometown to Albuquerque a number of years ago. One of them told me it took her three years to like the Duke City.
Sigh. Three years?
Soon after I tried to think this through, FB excerpts that magically flowed across my page piqued my curiosity because the title made me think it might tell us how to squish three years into....hmmm ....
how about three months?
Hey, God is able to do more than I can dream or imagine, right?
Do you check out an author before you read a book? That's my
How dare she not like Blacksburg!
The book is called "This is Where You Belong -- The Art and Science of Loving the Place you Live" by Melody Warnick.
Just before moving here, I was trying to figure out how we would possibly EVER learn to like this new spoke in the road. Steve loves his new job, and it's fabulous to live near extended family. It also helps that I have my own friends who had moved from their hometown to Albuquerque a number of years ago. One of them told me it took her three years to like the Duke City.
Sigh. Three years?
Soon after I tried to think this through, FB excerpts that magically flowed across my page piqued my curiosity because the title made me think it might tell us how to squish three years into....hmmm ....
how about three months?
Hey, God is able to do more than I can dream or imagine, right?
Do you check out an author before you read a book? That's my
modus operandi. I could hardly believe what I saw about this writer. She penned the book, in simple terms, because at the time she didn't much like the place I love most in the world: Blacksburg, Virginia! And that's really why I KEPT reading.
How dare she not like Blacksburg!
The book is called "This is Where You Belong -- The Art and Science of Loving the Place you Live" by Melody Warnick.
 |
| Daughter Haley visiting VA TECH a few years ago for a Summer Architecture Workshop. ______________________________________________________ I was 10 years old when I first fell in love with Blacksburg. I can still feel the crisp mountain air and the autumn leaves crackling under my shoes that day. That's when I declared that I WOULD graduate from Tech. NOTHING would stop me. And so it was. |
Warnick helped me see WHY I loved Blacksburg and she didn't. Why Steve and I immediately felt at home in China. And why we never really felt like we belonged in Tucson. (That revelation's going to surprise a lot of folks! He'd lived there since the 70's!)
But Warnick goes beyond the psych couch -- she delves into HOW to LEARN to love WHEREVER you live. Even if it is a place called ABQ. Or where we actually live -- dubbed the City of Vision, which is now the third largest city in New Mexico. But at the moment, it's all one big blob to us.
New Vision, New Blog
....Come along for the Ride
And so a new purpose for this blog was birthed out of her writings, at least for a season. In the realm of the movie Julia, Julia where the blogger writes about her experiences of following Julia Child's recipes day by day, I hope to write about our experiences of following Warnick's ideas.
Of courting our new place.
Three differences:
1) Julia followed recipes exactly, but we have to adapt experiences to situations, place, and age,
2) Our testings won't go in chronological order of the book, and
3) I probably won't write Every. Single. Day.
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