Wanderlust: Leading You Home

Sometimes it takes a while for your heart to catch up to your brain...or vice versa. Life's full of twists and turns. There are so many paths you can choose, so many journeys and adventures you can go on, and there is no right or wrong path to take. Just different ones. Each one leads you to unexpected experiences and outcomes that you never knew possible. It can introduce to things you never knew or remind of things you already did. Sometimes...the path can lead you back down a familiar road, one that you have already taken.

They call us the Gypsies. For good reason I suppose. My husband and I have been together for 12 years and have lived in 8 different homes and 4 different states. We are adventurers, risk takers, explorers. People joke that we often go somewhere on vacation and then we move there. They are not entirely speaking untruths. We learned long ago, from past experiences, that life is short and not guaranteed, so we choose to live our lives with joy and follow wherever our hearts lead us. Home is where we make it...as long as we are together. We have carved out this life for ourselves and have designed it in a way that makes it pretty easy to pick up and hitch up our gypsy wagon and move on to the next place, the next adventure.

For the past 8 months we have lived in paradise on an island on the Gulf coast of Florida. It has been so wonderful and we have had a blast. But paradise, my friends, is not a place, it's a state of mind. You can have paradise wherever you go if you choose to open your eyes and find it. Find the joy in the ordinary, open your heart, live life to the fullest and you will find that paradise lay within you all along.

Paradise can be found right where you left it...at home.

What is home? It means something different to everyone. To me, it means love, it means family. It doesn't necessarily mean a place you hang your hat. What makes someplace a home is who you get to share it with. The love and the laughter that fills the walls. Home to me is being wrapped in my husbands arms. As long as I am with him, I am home.

But...something has been missing for me for a while now. I can try and chase different dreams and see what fulfills my soul but I keep coming back to this one sticking point...family. I miss my family desperately.  After my Mom passed away in 2010 all I wanted to do was to escape. It was so painful of a loss that I just wanted to get away. So we moved...multiple times (lol) and each place we went was amazing! And I am not just saying that. It really is true. Each place we have experienced has taught me things about myself. Each place has shown me something new. Each place has gifted us with amazing people. Each place has opened my eyes to the world around me and for that I am grateful.

But I think it's time. I think it's time that I went back home. Not to the original place I called home but to the place where my most favorite people are.  I think y'all get where this post is going now...

After many long late night discussions with my husband, who is the most supportive man in the world and just gets me 100%, we have decided to hitch up our gypsy wagon, one more time, and head back to Texas. For as much as love adventuring, at the heart of who we both are, is two people who are homebodies. Love and family is at the core of what makes us tick.

We both want to be in the thick of it with our two nieces. School plays, choir concerts, music performances, first dates, drivers licenses, graduation, college, weddings. When they look back on their lives, I want them to know exactly just how much their Auntie and Uncle loved them and all of the great memories we made together. I don't want to just be someone who flies in for birthdays or holidays. I want to be a real part of their lives.

I know I don't need to explain myself to anyone but it's in my nature to share. My heart and my life are an open book. People may judge us for our decisions but the thing is, our life is our journey and its up to us to decide where we let it take us. As long as we are together we know it will be amazing.

It's up to all of us, to choose our paths and follow where our hearts lead. Life is too short to sit around and wait for tomorrow. Tomorrow may never come around. We only get one ride. Shouldn't it be filled with the stuff that makes our hearts sing?!