After a lot of time and a lot of back and forth, Tommy and I have moved to Arizona (finally)! If you know me personally, you know that I’ve been talking about moving out of state since Summer of 2017. It wasn’t until January 1st of 2020 that my dream was finally a reality. It was a long time coming and I learned a lot about trust, timing, and patience along the way so thought I would share a little bit about the time leading up to now.
Summer/Fall of 2018 we were close to moving to Arizona after researching every possible state in the U.S. We chose not to renew the lease on our place and packed everything up. After talking, researching, planning, and packing, moving South abruptly came to a halt. It was a year and a half of having my heart set on something that suddenly did a complete 180 on me. My dream of living somewhere warm felt shattered and I was incredibly torn.
My wonderful parents opened their home up to us until we found a place. More than a year passed and we were still there. We had looked at places to rent in Minnesota and even researched buying a home so we could have somewhere to finally settle down, but that wasn’t a good option for us so we just kept going on with our lives.
October 2019 rolled around and we were lightly talking about moving out of state again because both our jobs would allow it and we had nothing holding us back from trying it. After a lot more discussion we actually decided on Tennessee. In November we took a trip to Nashville to look at homes. We left without a signed contract and knew that wasn’t somewhere we wanted to live. Next thing you know we were looking at homes in Arizona again. On December 20th, site unseen, we very quickly signed a lease for a place in Arizona and were moved in by the first of the year. This decision was completely out of nowhere and it happened VERY fast.
Reasons God’s Timing Was Better Than Ours?
- Tommy landed an amazing career job with a great company.
- We got to spend a ton of time with family.
- We got to be there for the birth of my bonus-nephew.
- A lot of things changed at my job that now makes my work much more doable remotely.
- We are better off now financially than we were.
Looking back, I see so many reasons why moving when we thought we were going to would have been a bad idea and for God teaching me this lesson and blessing us with so much in the meantime (and always), I am thankful. He had it all planned out and He knew that our timing wasn’t right. Patience is hard, but also necessary and that was a lesson that I needed to learn.
Trust the process. Practice patience. Be grateful. God is good.
And in case you’re wondering, being down here is the greatest thing (aside from missing family). For someone like myself who struggles with anxiety and what I believe to be seasonal affective disorder, seeing the sunshine every day makes all the difference in the world.

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