The story of how a London baby turned Georgia girl wound up in west Michigan.
Hello friends
As you may already know I currently live in Michigan. But I’m not from here and I didn’t even move here from where I’m from. I’m not even from this country.
So how did I end up here? Well let me tell you...
A little background: my dad is from a little town outside of London in England. My mom is from a small town called Rome in GA. When they got married mom moved to London with dad.
I was born in London and I lived there till I was 4 almost 5. We moved twice while we lived in London. Obviously I don’t remember a whole lot about living there but I do remember some.
We moved to my mom’s home town when I was 4. The plan was for my dad to go to seminary but that never happened. The second Sunday after we moved we visited a church called 5th ave. Baptist church. Little did we know that church would be where we spent the next 8 years of our lives.
That Church was the church where I grew up for the most part. That church was the church where I met my best friend. That church changed and grew immensely while we were there. That church was like family to us. But one day we left that church.
My dad had gone from being the soul youth worker in the church, to begin intrum pastor, to being the pastor in the years that we lived in Georgia. Somethings changed and my family started to look at starting a new chapter. We sold our house and moved in to a two bedroom flat.
My dad found a new job pastoring a small church in Michigan. We came visited the church and stayed in the parsonage I now call home. My mom was unable to come with us and see it because she was pregnant with twins who were having major complications at the time. The church voted, dad got the job and two months later we moved.
We left behind my grandparents. We left my best friend. We left behind almost everything I could remember. We left to go be with people we didn’t know and my mom had never met and live in a house she had never seen.
I won’t lie to y’all, it was rough. At first I was excited but sad and the we got here.... and all of the excitement turned in to anger and loneliness. I didn’t want to go back but I also didn’t want to be here. I had a feeling that we were going to stay here awhile and so far we have. I’ve learned to like, even love living here. I’ve made friends. I’ve expected and I’m happy. Dose this mean that it wasn’t hard ? Dose it mean I’ve just forgotten? No. Of course not! It dose mean that it doesn’t hurt any more though. It dose mean that I don’t regret that we moved here. It means I don’t want to move anywhere else.
If you feel sad or alone I feel you friend. My advice to you is this, pray. That"s how I ended up with my most amazing friends. Take heart it will get better I promise. And if you have a family that has gone through whatever it is with you, spend time with them. It’s worth it.
Living here still feels unreal. I haven’t been back to GA in a year and there are days where I wonder if its still there or if the time I spent there actually happened. There are times I look around me an think “Do I really live here?”. It can feel like two different worlds. But both places ARE real and are part of me.
So now you know how in the world I ended up here. Obviously there are a lot of details to this story but those are for a different day.
Until next time Caitlin