We moved to Maryland almost 5 years ago now. We came straight out of college – a sheltered, Mormon college, nonetheless. We had no close family and didn’t know the area at all, but we were young and ready for adventure. I got pregnant shortly after our move, and spent much of my pregnancy holed up in a tiny, one-bedroom apartment in a not-so-ideal area. Then that baby came, and life got trickier, harder to juggle and even harder to understand.

When Axton was around 6 months old, a new family moved into our ward. A new family with a baby that – hey, looks around the same age as my baby! One Sunday, this new mom got up and bore her testimony. She spoke of losing her father a few years previously, and I was touched by not only with her willingness to share her heart with a brand new ward, but with the strength of her faith. I knew I wanted to be friends with her.

It wasn’t long before they had invited us over for dinner at their similar-to-our one bedroom apartment. Emily and I clicked instantly, and saw each other pretty much every week after that. We are the exact same age, with husbands the exact same age (down to the month!), our oldest children are within 3 weeks of each other, and we both went through our second pregnancy together, with our babies being born only 2 months apart. We’ve ran in rain and snow and freezing temperatures together, raised our children and gone on adventure after adventure. She is my emergency contact – the one I call at 3 in the morning, when I’m still at a birth and know I won’t be home in time to watch the kids when Adam needs to leave for work. We’ve cried over real-life issues, laughed and lived and loved. We’ve become best friends, sisters in Maryland.

And so it was that a large part of my existence and happiness came crashing in on me just 4 weeks ago when I learned that Emily and her family would be moving overseas. The day after I found out, I completely fell apart. I felt as if I were back in high school, grappling over a break-up with my boyfriend of two years. I felt lost, and didn’t know where to turn – the one person I wanted to talk to about my best friend moving was…my best friend moving. I didn’t realize how much of my life and my happiness depended on her being in it, until I was told that she would be leaving.

I knew that as her best friend, I should be happy for her. I should be excited and asking questions about where they were going to live, what they would visit and see, and when I could come visit her! But I needed to pout first. And pout I did! I even, I’ll admit, went through a short phase of bitterness –  I should just stop hanging out with her now so that it will hurt less when she does leave. I went through lots of phases, trying to decide just who I was going to be in the aftermath of learning this news. Mostly, I felt on the cusp of change. Something had shifted in the air and I could sense it all around me. It made me uncomfortable. It made me want to react – to beat Change at it’s own game. If life was just going to All of a Sudden Change on me, then I was going to change something first! I was feeling BIG, too. I wanted to make a statement. I was feeling drastic. Keep in mind, I was also feeling depressed.

I went through 4 distinct thoughts – 4 identifiably drastic thoughts. I had my own reasons for each of them, reasons just as vast as they are complicated – they didn’t just come to me out of nowhere, and they didn’t all come to me at exactly the same time. Yet, the reasons behind them were not backed up with the “right” evidence, but more with selfishness.

We should move, too.
We should have a baby.
I should leave the church.
I should quit photography.
We should move – Look at Emily’s family being young and adventurous! We should be young and adventurous, too. What are we still doing here in Maryland, anyway? This was never supposed to be a permanent thing. If we don’t get out of here now, we are never going to leave!
We should have a baby – Because then I have a darn good reason to excuse myself out of a lot of things.
I should leave the church – I feel the need to say, Don’t freak out. I’m not writing this to get home visits or more phone calls, I’m writing this to be real with you. I’m a real person with doubts and valleys of faith wavering thin. I’ve had several occasions lately that have caused me to decide – to stop sitting on the fence and jump off, from one side to another. I’ve had to decide what kind of Mormon am I going to be? The kind I’m supposed to be – the kind that loves everyone and shares my talents with everyone – in short, the kind that follows Jesus? Or am I going to be the kind of Mormon that cares more about what other members will think of me than what God will think of me? I’ve also recently heard news of several friends of mine leaving the church – friends I love and respect and whose opinions I value. When someone whose intelligence and voice you trust comes out and says, “The church you believe in doesn’t exist and here’s the evidence to prove it.” Well… I’m a researcher. I can appreciate a well-researched argument. Citations, sources, facts….she had them all. And those perfectly cited sources tempted me. In short, hard questions were coming at me, and I didn’t know how to answer them.
I should quit photography – I don’t make enough money to justify the sacrifices my family makes to keep my business afloat. I don’t have enough followers. I’ll never make a difference. My work isn’t good enough. I’ll never get where I want to be. I should.

Just.

Quit.

That’s what all of these would have been – an excuse to quit. Quit Maryland and start over somewhere else.
Use having a baby as an excuse to quit trying. Quit church to avoid the hard questions. Quit photography when I’m not feeling confident.

….and this is where I was 2 weeks ago when I said I had a blogpost in mind, but that I wasn’t ready to share it yet. Two weeks ago I tried to sit down and write out my feelings, and every time I typed out a sentence, I would end up deleting it. Over and over again, I attempted to sort my thoughts and each time I was mentally blocked. I’ve learned that writer’s block is my version of a stupor of thought – something wasn’t right. So I did something I rarely do – I waited. I sat on it. I had patience. I was still.

I slowly started to see my 2016 Goals weaving their way through my thoughts.

Be happy – with where I am.
Be nice – to those who disagree with me
Be patient – don’t make drastic decisions on a whim.
Put God first – Have faith. I may not know all the answers, but He does. Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith.

I had also recently finished reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. In it, she talks about the “formula” to discovering happiness is to consider “feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right – in an atmosphere of growth.”
The growth aspect is what was sticking out to me. As I was pondering on this, I read a blog of a friend of mine who has lost not just one baby, but two babies. Her raw honesty and sheer commitment to just put one foot in front of the other in the darkest of times has always made me look up to her, and I consider her one of the most amazing examples. She shared on her blog some things that a close friend of hers had written to her, and I realized just how much I needed to hear some of those words, too. I share some of those thoughts now:

The phrase “My relationship with God had to GROW UP” completely stuck out to me. I didn’t read it so much as my relationship with God was childish, and it needed to be “more adult,” I read it as grow UP, grow heavenward, grow in such a way that it defies gravity.

Shortly after reading this post, with its words still fresh in my mind, I rounded the corner of our house and noticed that Adam had constructed a make-shift lattice for our blackberry plants. Instead of growing wide and low across the grass, its branches tangling and twisting over and around each other, the vines were now….growing UP. I inspected the vines closer and saw that Adam had used strips of velcro to secure the plant to the wire – the only reason it was able to defy gravity in such a way. The plant rested its weight on the wire, tied tightly so as to keep it in place when the wind blows and once its branches get heavy with berries.

I’ve become quite obsessed with this thought – that a gardener built a structure to give form, support, and guidance to its plants. It’s made me reflect –

What structures do I have in place to ensure I’m growing UP, not out? What do I rest my branches on when I get heavy?

What am I tied to?

I was clearly depending on Emily for a large source of happiness and comfort. And while friends are important and healthy and necessary, perhaps I needed to take a step back and make sure that my first source of comfort came from my relationship with my Father in Heaven and my Savior, and then from my husband. Maybe instead of moving and leaving Maryland to start over somewhere new, I just needed to do a better job of making friends right where I am at!
I’ve found comfort in recent talks and scriptures I’ve read in relation to some of the questions I’ve had with the church – but the first step to finding these answers was to seek them out from the right sources. And having a baby? Well, it’s just not the right timing at the moment. I want having a baby to be for the right reasons, and honestly, we’re just not realistically ready yet!

When I was honest with myself and my answers to the question what am I tied to?, I realized that I had been right all along – I had been on the cusp of change, but it didn’t need to be a drastic, life-upheaving do-over. Sometimes change is not about moving or altering my physical circumstances – sometimes change comes from within. Sometimes change comes staying.

Sometimes, change is just a matter of growing up.