delara, interrupted

There's a song "Chicago" by Ingram Hill that totally resonates for me. In fact, the chorus is what really gets to me:

If you ever want to come home from Chicago
And leave the things that habit made you love
I'll be there to await your arrival
To give you a life you'll never know

When I write about missing Chicago, it's the habit of it that I miss. But... I'm fully on board with the fact that I'm so at home here. And I need to be here. My soul needs to be here. And more importantly, I need to not be there, in Chicago, simply out of habit and comfort. That's just too easy. This is where the juice is.

I am now building a life I never could have imagined, and even now I'm not sure I can completely envision it in its entirety. It's revealing itself to me as we go along, and it's exciting. And scary and difficult at times. I'm just learning how to go with the flow. And that doesn't come easily to me.

Surfing was a good metaphor for what this phase of my life needs to be like. When surfing, I could sit on my board for a good 30 minutes to an hour without catching a wave - just talking story with the locals, soaking up the sun, bobbing with the waves - and it would be complete contentment. It wasn't only about catching a wave, practicing my skills, etc. It's about the whole experience. And it's about patience and going with the flow and rhythm of the ocean. And then, when just the right wave would come along, paddling strongly was exhilarating and getting up on the board and navigating the wave was awesome.

So, yeah - while I miss Chicago and my peeps, this is where I am. And I love it. And I can't wait to see what the next page looks like. It's a pretty cool story so far. But it's a far different script than what I think people are used to reading about my life. And that makes it hard to explain what I'm going through. Just before I moved, a dear friend in Chicago gave me an issue of Brilliant Star describing a hero's journey. He shared that he saw me making a hero's journey by moving. While touched and encouraged by this perspective, I hardly consider myself a hero. But I see what he meant, and I'm so grateful for his reflection on what I'm doing right now. Hopefully, in time, I'll be able to share that vision in a way that others might understand. For now, I'm content knowing that I'm doing what I gotta do, and that perhaps this leg of the journey is meant to be taken alone.