Why I Haven't Moved

Making home in a place that doesn't make much sense.

This weekend, a friend and I were having coffee and she asked me, “Why have you decided to stay in Kent?” It was a good question, and one that I’ve have to ask myself multiple times through the years.

I moved to Kent, Ohio in May of 2018 having only spent about an hour here in the middle of a wintry March day earlier that spring. I moved from Nashville, where I’d spent 10 months living and working and wondering if I needed to buy a wide-brimmed hat. (I never did). My first year in Ohio was hard; I got hit by a car on my bike, struggled to adjust the tasks of my new job as project manager, and felt like everyone I knew already had found their people. But slowly, I began to make friends and settle into life in this quirky college town.

In late 2019, I quit the job I moved here to do, and in early 2020, I got a remote job with a company based in Pittsburgh. I was 99% certain I’d move back to Pittsburgh—the city where I first lived after graduating from college. That plan made sense. Ohio didn’t. But then, of course, the world changed and I guess something in me did, too, and now it’s almost 5 years later and I’m still here—in Kent, Ohio.

Earlier this year, I went through a particularly challenging time with my health and my community, and it felt like the life I had built was crumbling. In March, I probably got the closest I ever had to thinking I was actually going to move. That plan made sense. Or so I thought. And so I made spreadsheets and set up Zillow alerts. I discussed my options with friends and family, but through the course of those conversations, something compelled me to hold on, to be patient, to let myself feel my emotions but not let them be a dictator. I decided I would not move. And so when my friend asked me why I’ve chosen to stay here—coming up on 7 years—I realized I had an answer that feels true and tried, earned and honest.

While it doesn’t always make sense that I have settled in a place where I don’t have a job, don’t have family, and don’t even attend church anymore, I come back to a quote I read a few months back from a Wendell Berry poem, “We live the given life, not the planned.” The life I have been given in Kent, Ohio is not the life I planned when I moved here. By now, I thought I’d be married or maybe at least have gone to grad school or broken 3 hours in the marathon or some other accomplishment that is shiny and bright. I had such high expectations for what adulthood would entail and very few of those expectations have held up. But in their place, the experiences I have had have enriched me, stretched me, grown me into a version of myself who isn’t so bitter, isn’t so dead-set on outcomes, isn’t so limited in her understanding of what it means to trust God and walk in his ways.

This place I’ve made my home isn’t perfect and neither is my life. Sometimes I get lonely. Sometimes I wonder what’s next. Sometimes I worry that I have wasted my twenties investing in a place that hasn’t gotten me to where I imagined I’d be by now.

But in the same week, my two friends who have become moms since I moved here meet me for coffee on a Saturday morning and one of them brings her new baby. We help her find a good spot to nurse and we sip a pour-over and we don’t worry about feeding the parking meter because the lot is free because this is Ohio. And the next week, a house concert with Andy Squyres pops up in the next town over and my friend says she can come, too. On a Thursday afternoon I take my recycling out and I meet my mailman in the driveway and we make small talk and you know what—talking about the weather is one of life’s simple pleasures. “The sunshine does feel good today! The leaves are really colorful this year! I’m glad the rain cleared before your route today!”

I wave hello to Bruce and his arthritic dog Chester on my morning route around the block and I take banjo lessons down the street at the shop where little kids squawk out notes on their clarinet in the next practice room over. I run into people I know at the grocery store and pass them my Aldi quarter and tell them that there’s some discounted chicken in the meat cooler. I return my books to the library and the woman at the desk smiles at me. I drop in the coffee shop on North Water to get some Autumn Blend beans and the manager shows me this year’s tie-dye shirts because he knows I already own two from the last two years they sold tie-dye shirts.

My life in Kent is nothing like I thought it would be. And I’m grateful for the story God has written for me here. Life doesn’t always make sense, but neither does God. As Isaiah 64: 3-4 says, “For when you did awesome things that we did not expect, you came down, and the mountains trembled before you. Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.”

Last night I went on a walk around my neighborhood and took in the fall colors of this place I call home, and I felt gratitude towards God for the seasons he’s brought me through. Tonight I will drive 20 minutes to the next town over, and I hope Andy Squyres plays this song, because the lyrics feel true and tried, earned and honest.

“In You I am empty
In You I am full
In You I am living with or without miracles
In You in Your presence
Struck down but not destroyed
Live or die I am filled
With death defying joy.”