Wherever You Go, You're Still There

reflections on moving to the best place ever and still not being whole

Recently we celebrated the two-year anniversary of when we left our RV and hometown of 20+ years and moved to our favorite place to visit: Chattanooga, Tennessee. I had spent two decades dreaming of living somewhere with grass you could roll in, trees that changed with the seasons, winding roads with fewer cars, lightning bugs in summer and the occasional snow in winter, fertile black dirt instead of sand, creeks you could splash in…and mountains. Boy, do I love mountains.

I wanted to live in a vibrant city where everybody valued the outdoors but also valued art, diversity, and community. I wanted to spend weekday afternoons going on hikes or visiting museums. I imagined all these things for so long and then my husband and I finally made the sacrifices needed to plant our roots in a place that had it all.

And you know what? I was right. Nearly every day of my new life is rich in beautiful nature and culture. All the friends I’ve made love being outside. I genuinely enjoy all four seasons and every single month of the year. I don’t spend much time in traffic. The grass is literally greener. I love the city of Chattanooga more than ever and we never run out of things to do. Seriously, it’s amazing. I still wake up shocked that I get to live here.

And yet…my life isn’t perfect? Our marriage got harder? My mental health has had some real low points? Parenting has been emotionally exhausting and I’ve been harsh and impatient worse than ever? I’ve felt insecure and self-loathing?

I traveled around America and moved to the best place I could find…but it didn’t make me whole. I know everyone else saw this disappointment coming, and I did too, but still…what’s the deal?

Advice from a Vampire

In Neil Gaiman’s spooky but wholesome novel The Graveyard Book, a young boy asked his mentor (a vampire) about whether people who chose to hasten their own deaths were happier, and the response was, “It's like the people who believe they'll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn it doesn't work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you. If you see what I mean.”

I had to pause when I read that. We try to escape our problems but, well, we can’t escape the brokenness in us. We can’t move anywhere that hasn’t been touched by selfishness and death, and we especially can’t be completely free from the yucky stuff inside ourselves.

For example, I thought I would get fit and strong as soon as I moved to somewhere with epic hiking opportunities, but getting fit and strong requires self-discipline, and my lack of self-discipline followed me here.

It’s like when you’re drowning in the baby stage and you think “I am going to feel 100% amazing if I can ever sleep through the night again” but then you get more sleep and it’s a major improvement to your life, but you still *drumroll* feel tired all the time. The “survival mode” years extend longer than I thought.

Or when you take quit social media and think you’ll become a perfectly balanced time management guru only to find that you just ended up refreshing your emails 100 times a day and spend more time on YouTube.

Or maybe it’s just me.

Best-Case Scenarios Can Only Get You So Far

The reason I share all this is because a) several people have told me that they’re thinking about moving but they’re wondering if they really should go for it and b) I think we all tend to feel like circumstantial adjustments are able to make us whole, and it’s a lie.

One thing to keep in mind about the moving thing is that roots take time to grow—some things don’t have shortcuts—and it’s a heavy thing to leave a place where you’ve been for awhile. Ecclesiastes 3 is helpful here; there’s a time for everything…a time to plant and a time to uproot. You shouldn’t feel guilty if you leave, but, well, maybe you’ve got a really good thing going and it’s best to stay. You are an important part of whatever community you’re a part of; don’t take it lightly.

It’s very possible that a circumstantial change will improve your quality of life every single day. It’s quite possible that getting to experience all four seasons will change how you accept and embrace the rhythms of life. And yes, if you get a job promotion or if your needy newborn gets older or if your big bout of sickness goes away, you really might feel so much better. But a circumstantial change of any degree isn’t enough to make you whole.

What is wholeness, anyway? You either have it or you don’t? I don’t know how that works. It feels like a matter of rhetoric. But I do know people—from books and real-life personal relationships—who have had everything go wrong and they were still strong, and even happy. (Corrie Ten Boom comes to mind, of course.) And whatever those kinds of people have, I want it.

When we expect something to do everything for us, we’re setting ourselves up for heartbreak. If I expect my kids or my husband to be “my whole world” and they end up disappointing me, then I’m going to be mad because it will feel like my whole world has crashed down. That’s too big of a burden for them. They deserve better than to be my whole world.

And so does my city. Or my house. My job. My season of life. Any of it. I’m going to bring most of my problems with me, so I can only expect so much out of a circumstantial change.

You can probably guess that I’m figuring out just how much I need to put my hope in the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, the God who calls me Beloved and Daughter and Friend. (I think I’ll always be figuring that out.)

Suffice to say: I love where I live, and if you are able, I do recommend choosing to plant roots somewhere that aligns with your values. But even best-case-scenario can only get you so far, because scenarios hold much less power than the intangible stuff.

I hope that encourages you.

Love,

Hope

P.S. Here are some photos of summery goodness so far. I hope you’ve been able to get outside and make some childlike memories too. ❤️