Feeling the Earth Move Again

A year ago yesterday the owners of the bookstore announced publicly that they had made the decision to shut things down after the first of the year 2016. I had received the news some weeks before, but until my bosses had time to hammer out the particulars we kept it, literally, in the family.

I was not surprised by the announcement, was glad for my bosses that they were able to make this decision for themselves when it was still a decision they didn't have to make. I was  less glad for myself, of course. Not only would I be losing a job I loved, I'd be losing all the perks: the paycheck, of course, but also the privilege of being in the company of customers I looked forward to seeing, and, of course, the books I got my hands on months before their dates of publication. Most importantly to me, though, was that feeling of the earth shifting beneath my feet -- again.

In the several years prior I'd had a laundry list of times when I'd lost my footing, literally and figuratively. The death of my parents, my husband's medical emergencies, my own injury, my husband's period of unemployment. I had honestly not yet regained my sense of wholeness from any of these things, and in a very raw way I believed I was losing a vital part of my personal identity along with my job.

So here I am a year later, working at a new job that found me after several months at home, a job that I feel like I've been doing my whole life (even though I am forever still referencing notes I took in The Big Black Notebook  my new boss gave me the first day in the office). I work with people who already feel like old friends, for a nonprofit that enables the good work of folks who believe in our community to come to life. It's a job that I am excited to get to every morning of the work week, and one that energizes me and encourages me about the future of my hometown.


Every change that has ever been thrust upon me has initially scared the bejeebers out of me. I am a "plan your work and work your plan" gal, thanks to my Daddy, so when things happen that are beyond my control I tend to unravel a bit.

Come to think of it though, from the moment the obstetrician told my Mama to push, I  have been forced from one comfortable place into a place of frightening uncertainties, and made to adapt to a world bent on changing around me, without letting it change me.  That you are reading this right now means you survived that same introduction into How Things Work Around HERE. It was a crash course; it's a lesson we are all invited to learn over and over and over again while we ride this planet.

But this is what has been true for me, and I'm betting it's true for most of you, too: those moments have always led to finding the right hand to hold, the right Higher Power to trust, the right moment to glory in what is right in front of our faces when it is too scary to look down the road, and the right place to plant my feet toward the next best thing that is out there, one I'd never have found had I not been forced to move from where I was.

And that's the way I see it.