okay. i’m ready.

Whew. It’s been a crazy month. So much has been happening and all of it has been so spontaneous.

The Professor proposed. I gave my (month’s) notice at my job. I started saying my goodbyes to people I have loved for a decade. I spent my last official Sunday interpreting at my church for a new Deaf couple. I visited friends far away for the last time (for awhile, anyway). I bought my wedding dress. We set a date. The Professor booked our wedding venue. More huuuuge blessings that we’ll announce soon.

Whew. I’m overwhelmed.

…

I’m moving to Georgia in 3 days.

Three. Days.

Not just a visit. It’s not like all those times I drove to see The Professor for a few days. It’s not going to be the same as filling up my daytimes while he’s at work and then coming up with something big and bold and outrageous to do when he picked me up for a date.

We won’t have to try to cram into one weekend all the experiences and conversations and emotions you normally have over a full month.

We won’t have to say goodbye again. Ever again.

I’m moving to Georgia. Permanently. Georgia will become my home.

I can’t hardly believe it.

We’ve been preparing for almost a month, and now it’s right around the corner…. and I cannot hardly believe it.

I have felt like a nomad for two full  years. While on the World Race we traveled every few weeks, camping down wherever there was space (whether a bed was available or not). I came home and spent a month traveling to see friends and family for the first time in a year. I moved in with my sweet roomie and immediately got a job with a commute which, at the very least, required a 40 minute drive through awful traffic. Both morning and night. And I spent on average, not counting the commute, 11 hours a day there. When I finally get back to the apartment, it’s bedtime or very nearly. Every weekend I would drive 2 hours south to spend time with friends and church, or I drove 7+ hours to visit The Professor. I believe, in my 11 months of living in Northern Kentucky, I’ve spent maybe 3 weekends total at my apartment. TOTAL.

Can you see why I still feel like a nomad? It isn’t because I don’t have a place to sleep. It isn’t because I’m not welcome anywhere I tread.

But it’s exhausting to be on the move all the time.

I was driving to see friends a few days ago and about an hour and a half into the trip I had to pull over to the side of the road because I was losing my mind. Tears streaming down my face, snot threatening to choke me- all the emotions of the last 2 years gurgling up to suffocate me all at once.

And it isn’t because I’m unhappy! I’m SO HAPPY. So very, extremely, overwhelmingly joyful.

But it’s a lot to take in all at once.

Processing the last 2 years of my life, grieving this season of singleness, independence, Kentucky-living, constantly-being-surrounded-by-everyone-I-know-and-love and at the same time celebrating this incredible and exciting new season of newness- new engagement, new wedding planning, new state, new job (hopefully), new friends, new community, new church, new home- it’s just hard, man. It’s so, so hard. Especially trying to take all of the things in and celebrate all the new things on my own, still living 8 hours away from the boo, and having literally zero amount of time to myself. In the next 3 days, I work 34 hours and have to pack up the rest of my life and move it to my car. For Thanksgiving, we’ll spend a week with The Professor’s family. The Monday after, I fly back up to Cincinnati to work one more week. That Friday I’ll fly back down late, and prepare all the things for our engagement photos to be done that Saturday.

Exhausting.

Whew.

Listen. I know that I know that I know that I’m ready to move to Georgia. I know that I know that I know that I’m ready for this next big life change and all the things that come with it. Maybe ask me again in a couple months just to be sure, but honestly there’s no turning back. This is the boy I love, and I’m going to marry him. And when I marry him all his things will become my things and all his people and all his traditions and all his memories and all his life. And vice versa! It really brings new meaning to that verse in Ruth (1:16):

“Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.”

I’m just so ready to be done with all the transitioning, and ready to move on to the roots-planting phase of life with someone else. Even though we won’t be married for another several months, there are so many things for us to do and accomplish before we’re ready to take the plunge: job-hunting (for me), setting up house, church-finding, marital counseling, financial counseling, wedding planning: just a few of the millions of tasks on our immediate to-do list.

But I’m so ready- and so grateful- to finally be taking a real step forward, a step toward all the dreams we want to make happen. I’m ready to take a break from traveling all the time and just spend some quality face-to-face time with this man I’m marrying. I’m ready to finally set down some roots.

I’m so ready to make this move, to grieve my last season well, and leap boldly into this new one.

Okay. I’m ready.