Life has way of wrecking plans when you’re diligently working to build them. Sometimes this destruction is in our best interest and we don’t even realize it…that’s where this story comes in.

As I have talked about in my writing many times in the past, your twenties have advantages and disadvantages. One is the disadvantages is that we have no sense of direction while simultaneously being bombarded with a robust sense of passion. This often leaves us twenty-something year olds, confused on what to do with our lives, where to do it and on what timeline. This narrative has been consuming my life the past year—a lack of direction, but with lots of passion.

I have been attempting to move out of my hometown for years now, a struggle I think many people my age grapple with. I first tried to move away after high school, deciding to go to University of Pittsburgh for college placing me about three and a half hours away from my hometown. That only lasted a few months before I found myself switching schools and returning home. After moving back home I fantasized about living at the beach but refused to uproot myself and my education and switch schools again.

After graduating college, I decided to take a job in my hometown with plans to follow my “at the time” boyfriend, to the DC area after he graduated. Not surprisingly this fell through, and a year and a half later I was still in my hometown dreaming of bigger more opportunistic places.

Fast forward a few weeks, I finally put my notice in at my apartment and had made plans to move to Raleigh to live with a friend. The only problem was, I had no job there and I had no idea what Raleigh was like because I had never been there. The anxiety I felt planning to move somewhere I had never been, and to take a job at a facility I had never visited before terrified me. In the limited time I had before moving, I did not have any time to actually go to Raleigh and “try it out”…or so I thought.

A few weeks prior I had booked flights to Fayetteville, Arkansas to see a friend. This was a special friend, someone I had been hoping for some sort of epic romance with for quite some time, but nonetheless a friend. I got on my plane, sat at my hour long layover, got on another plane and then stood outside of the airport waiting for the boy I had a crush on to pick me up. I kid you not, it was not until this moment that I realized I was not in Arkansas, I was in North Carolina. Immediately my panic ensued when I realized I was stranded at a small airport in North Carolina but then it quickly subsided after I took a look at a map. As I stared at my blinking dot on google maps and I saw “Raleigh” only a short distance from me.

It was then that I remembered, God disrupts our plans when we plan thinking we are in control. I fly all the time and ended up flying to the completely wrong state on accident, but it was an accident that was suppose to happen. I had interviews already set up virtually that I now got to change to in person. I had been trying to leave my hometown for so long and never had the courage or opportunity to do so, it had to be made clear to me that there was something more for me and it was in Raleigh.

As far as men go, I’m learning to be patient. I think sometimes we try to force things instead of letting them play out due to impatience. Patience is a virtue, and letting things happen at the right time will allow them to be strong and fruitful instead of flimsy.

Thank you God for happy accidents ❤️