sc > wa

what nobody told me about moving cross country

aside from the time I spent as a toddler in Honduras, I lived my whole life in south carolina.

the most beautiful place in my humble opinion. the epitome of hot and humid. sun-filled sandy beaches. the best food. the friendliest people. it is entirely opposite than washington.

now i'm not saying washington is all bad. it is beautiful in its own way. it has mountains, beaches, and lots of moisture... yet the things i love the most about south carolina do not exist here. its cold. and not the dry kind of cold... but the wet cold that goes straight into your bones. the beaches are rocky (as in you never have to the desire to go and lay down on the beach for hours to relax.) the food is so-so. super healthy which is great but so-so. and it RAINS. more than anywhere I've ever been.

so when I moved here, it was complete culture shock for me. but not in a quick way. i didn't experience culture shock the first month I moved here, but instead it took about 2 years of living here for me to come to terms with the fact that I will always be cold and the ocean is always freezing.

once you get over the cool fact that you are from a different place, people start asking things like, "oh what do you like to do?" and I cringe every time i'm asked it. cause i don't have a genuine answer. i don't know what I like to do.

cause all the things i love to do you can't do comfortably here. i love to lay out and tan on a sandy beach and hop into bath tub temperature water to cool off. i love to go for all-day-long drives on the boat in nothing but a swimsuit. i love water tubing. i love stepping outside and instantly feeling the sun warm your skin. i love the feeling of stepping out the door and being hit with such intense humidity that you feel instantly wet. I know that one may be weird but it's true. i love swimming (in warm water). i love everything outdoors in south carolina.

i do not however love hiking. i really enjoying being able to breath when i'm walking. i do not love the rain. i hate the cold. i will never jump into a body of water here.

and yet, i stay here. mostly because the lord asks me to. but I am also learning that the longer i am here the easiest it is to not compare.

the less i compare the two and focus on where god has me, the more i see the beauty in this magical evergreen state.

the more i see the life that the rain brings.

the more i actually find myself sighing in relief when the first rain of fall comes. like this "it's time to get #cozy" button turns on inside of me.

the more i see the massiveness of god in the mountains around me.

no-one told me that moving across country to a place that is the complete opposite of your home would be a death trap of comparison and it took me two years to figure that out. don't let it take you two years of robbed joy to figure it out.

but now that I know. comparison kills joy. and there is beauty everywhere. in all things.