Steer

When I was riding Rocket that morning, I was equally convinced I was going to fall off that dang horse, and that I couldn’t possibly fall off that dang horse.

I spent the whole ride praying that this animal would get his life together and stop veering off the trail, trying to eat grass.

I had expected a nice, leisurely ride and instead, felt like every moment was one step closer to disaster.

It felt poetic in some way that I had been given the most stubborn of all the horses and I was at the back of the train fighting this endless battle, when the rest of the group was just chilling up ahead.

Riding Rocket truly did teach me that incredibly important lesson of how to steer though.

As I have navigated my choice to relocate to Texas, the end goal has been clear: get to Waco.

The path there, however, has been full of obstacles and redirections. My horse keeps getting distracted and almost running my head into a tree branch.

But I’m steering.

I’m having to take each step as it is given to me, rather than looking too far at what’s ahead.

I know where I want to go, and I’ll get there, but if I don’t duck right now, Rocket is going to let me smack into this tree full force.

This whole process is testing my patience, but having the secret out has helped ease a lot of my stress.

I wasn’t expecting to tell everyone this soon, but there again, I can’t possibly plan every step, I just have to take them as they come. Last week, my principal asked the staff to let her know if we were not planning to return, so here we are.

It’s almost as if I’m setting up a bunch of dominoes and I keep wanting to put them down all at once. Instead, I’m being given one domino at a time and I have to carefully place it on the table, before I can be given the next one. I figure I will eventually have all my dominoes lined up and then I can see the magic as I knock the first one over and it perfectly takes out the rest of the pattern.

I know that’s how this works because I witnessed it when I started the process to move to Tennessee.

I couldn’t have planned how that all worked out if I tried. It just did. I had to make a choice. Other people I didn’t even know had to make choices. Eventually, all those choices led me to a yellow door in the middle of the night after 36 hours on the road.

Even though Tennessee is not my forever home as I had surmised, it gave me something incredibly important. Something that made the Texas decision that much easier. Hope.

Tennessee gave me hope. It gave me a reset. It helped me to find nature. It helped me to breathe. It reconnected me to God and my Catholic faith. It gave me a few AMAZING friends. Most importantly, I found the purpose I had been so greatly missing in my life: being a teacher. I will forever be bonded to the students I have had the blessing to teach and develop relationships with in TN. They are the absolute reason I know I ended up here.

Now, I know many things I’m moving to Texas for, like the warmer weather, the space, a chance to build community, but really Texas is about FINALLY listening to my heart. It was always the plan, but I let other people distract me from it. Then, when my dad died, I thought I couldn’t bear to be there ever again. But it turns out, part of my healing was realizing it’s what I’ve been missing all along.

Not only will I be a very short drive away from my people in Texas, I will also be a day’s drive from Colorado (YAY!) and less than half a day’s drive from the beach and from Louisiana. Now, why is Louisiana important all of a sudden? More on that later.

As I sit here finishing this blog and getting ready to start attacking my current iteach course, I only have one big question on my mind.

Is there going to be a yellow door on the other side?

Will there be an inexplicably clear sign when it’s the right choice for me?

I have to believe the answer to that question is undoubtedly, yes.

I know what the goal is, now I just have to make the most of the next several months here in TN and pray that I continue to steer according to my purpose.

(Oh and find a job and a place to live in TX 😀 – go me!)

❤