Sometimes Sweet is doing a weekly journal prompt, so I thought I would join in on the fun! This week’s prompt?  Write about a time you view as a marker in your life; a distinct place where things changed, for better or worse. 

I can think of two moments in my life that were completely life changing, and both of them happened within the same year.  Thankfully for me, they both ended up being positive experiences, though the events leading up to the first were anything but easy and was a daily struggle.  That story, however, is for another day.

In June of 2008 I met a man.  Technically I met him a year before that, but didn’t remember it. He tells me that he tried to talk to me, but I was apparently not interested. Whoops. Thankfully for me he decided to try again, and as these were the days of the MySpace he sent me a message asking me out.  Throwing caution to the wind, I figured I might as well, even though he had been stalking me at the nearby coffee shop (which I didn’t actually know at this point – I just thought I saw him in there because he also liked coffee, it’s not like I kept running into him in the feminine hygiene aisle at Wal-mart… that would have been awkward).  Long story short, he picked me up for lunch, we talked and joked around and set up a second date… for later that same day.  We stayed up way too late and watched movies because we apparently both really liked movies.

Within a couple of weeks we decided to make it official and label each other boyfriend and girlfriend and we almost virtually became joined at the hip.  Before I knew it he was inviting me to go with him to visit his family in Minnesota for Christmas and suddenly we were talking about living together.  At the time, I thought nothing of it, but now looking back I can see why family might have been nervous at how fast things were moving.  I wasn’t someone who dated often, but I felt really good about Josh, and was happy with the way things were going.

And then we came to it – a major crossroad.  Josh had decided that he wanted to move home to Minnesota from our current location in Colorado… where I had spent the majority of my life, and he wanted to know if I would come along.  I vaguely remember when he told me that he wanted to move back, but I do know that my heart sank when he said the words. Our relationship was in early stages, but I knew that I loved him and that he loved me, so I wasn’t surprised that he followed this up with his hope that I would come with him. As much as I loved him, I was immediately torn. I’ve never been one to jump for joy at change, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to leave my entire family and little world behind.

I can’t tell you how long it took for me to make a decision, but I don’t think it was long.  I knew I had to take a leap of faith and just believe that everything would work out.  I’m not sure who was more surprised that I was taking such a big step to move across the country to the unknown… me or my family. Either way, it was one of the best decisions I could have made.  Sure, the first couple of years were tough, but overall the experience has been a good one, and I don’t even want to imagine what my life would have been if I had stayed behind.

Granted, while Minnesota has been good to us, it is not our forever home and we are yet again coming to another crossroad in our lives. We’ve been there before more than once, but tend to make a U-Turn and circle back around.  This time I think we’re going to have to just take a chance and risk getting lost. Maybe we’ll find the place we didn’t even know we were looking for.