(Never mind it took me this long to finish my reflections on last year. Just pretend you’re reading this post at the end of 2023 or in early January of 2024.)

Dreams of the Past

“Taran wanted to make a sword; but Coll, charged with the practical side of his education, decided on horseshoes.”

So begins The Book of Three, the first book of Lloyd Alexander’s acclaimed YA fantasy series, The Chronicles of Prydain (and one of my favorite series).

I grew up reading these stories: on my own, with my family, and on audiobook. This past fall I listened to the audiobooks again, and as I followed young Taran through the first book in particular, my heart simultaneously ached and laughed for how much of myself I saw in him.

A few pages into the story, after horseshoe-making turns into failed sword-making and then a failed swordplay lesson, Taran exclaims to old Dallben in frustration, “I think . . . it will be vegetables and horseshoes all my life!” And on the very next page, “I think there is a destiny laid on me that I am not to know anything interesting, go anywhere interesting, or do anything interesting. I’m certainly not to be anything.”

As a girl, fed regular adventures like Redwall and The Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean and The Inheritance Cycle, I wanted to do something big like the heroes I read on the pages and saw on the screen. I wanted to know interesting things, go interesting places, do interesting things, and be something interesting.

I abhorred the boring, turned the simple into the exciting, treated everything dramatically, and told myself and others that I was not cut out for a “normal,” humdrum life. My mom and I had many conversations that could have been reenactments of the heartfelt exchanges between Jo March and Marmie in Little Women.

I got my first real taste of the exotic my senior year of high school, when I spent a week in Honduras with a family from church. Visiting other places, experiencing another culture, and speaking another language broadened my perspective—and my dreams—to life outside the US. I felt the first tug on my heart to a real place beyond what I had always known.

The next and much stronger tug came during the summer after my freshman year of college, during my first immersion trip in Spain. Even before I returned to the US, I set my sights on the country that had claimed my heart. I planned to go back to Spain to live and work as an ESL teacher, perhaps eventually as a missionary. A year and a half later, God allowed me to study at a Spanish university for a semester.

After college, I returned home to New Jersey to receive my master’s degree, where I worked hard toward my dream of returning to Spain, of going overseas, of living a life abroad. Anything except continuing “normal” life in the same country I was born and raised in (God forbid the same state).

Life changed, though. My health tanked, the world shut down, and my projected return to Spain for another study-abroad experience never took place.

I stayed home, finished my master’s, and stayed home some more. Smothered under the weight of an ill body, an exhausted mind, and a sore heart, all my dreams fizzled and died. I was no longer “the girl who was going to Spain”—just the girl who was trying to survive one day at a time. Now a few years removed from my last trip to Spain, that passion had faded. I didn’t know what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go.

Whatever it was, it was impossible anyway. With the state of my health and my finances, I saw no prospects for being anywhere besides my parents’ house in rural New Jersey, much less living outside the country.

Joys of the Present

God wasn’t done with me, however. In 2022, He swooped in, uprooted my life, and moved me—not east across the ocean to Spain but west to the mountains of Colorado. He gave me an apartment with my cousin, provided a part-time job tutoring at a community college, and blessed me with another part-time job remote co-teaching at a Christian high school.

I reveled in the joy of the new, the different, and the wide-open space of Colorado. Gradually the stress of adjustment settled into the plodding of routine as I learned my area, built community, and found my footing as an independent adult.

Then 2023 started, and more than my health went downhill. I went through my first dating relationship (very fast, very short, and very toxic), and two weeks afterward, in what felt like another break-up, God moved me from the church I’d been attending for nearly a year to another church.

From this physical, mental, and emotional rock-bottom, God graciously lifted me into what truly became a new life (Ps 40:2). I thrived in my new church community. I took steps (literally) to heal, work on myself, and grow by walking every day, reading helpful books, and taking to heart the lessons I had learned. Over the summer, I picked up some jobs as a freelance editor, another long-time dream of mine.

By God’s grace, the new school year brought not just additional hours but also the physical capacity to meet those extra demands. My body was stronger, my mind clearer, and my heart fuller as, for the first time, I truly embraced my identity as a teacher and not just as a tutor.

When 2023 came to its end, I came to realize the many, many blessings of my current life. Not the life I imagined. Not the life I would have asked for (it wasn’t my idea to move to Colorado). But the life God has given me.

And it is a good life.  

I’m working jobs that couldn’t be better tailored to who God made me and the skills He gave me. I’m fulfilling my passions and chasing my dreams as I write fantasy novels, blog devotionals, and book reviews. I’m continuing to invest in and expand my network of friends at church, at work, and beyond. I’m living in a beautiful apartment complex central to miles of paths and sidewalks in view of the mountains. I’m using my freedom to read good books, play piano, and cultivate spiritual growth.

These are not big things. They’re not fancy things, and they’re certainly not exotic. To the contrary, my days are full of the small moments of the everyday things in a normal life, in the middle of the US.

And I couldn’t be happier.

I smiled (and perhaps my eyes got a little misty) at this poignant passage from the end of Lloyd Alexander’s last book in The Chronicles of Prydain:

“Long ago I yearned to be a hero without knowing, in truth, what a hero was. Now, perhaps, I understand it a little better. A grower of turnips or a shaper of clay, a Commot farmer or a king—every man is a hero if he strives more for others than for himself alone. . . .”
“Once, I hoped for a glorious destiny,” Taran went on, smiling at his own memory. “That dream has vanished with my childhood; and though a pleasant dream it was fit only for a child. I am well-content as an Assistant Pig-Keeper.”

Chapter 21, “Farewells”

Though I once had dreams of the foreign and the exotic, the adventure of living abroad as a missionary or an ESL teacher or some other extraordinary job, they were dreams of the past. At present, I am well-content as a tutor, teacher, and writer.

Open Hands for the Future

I’m not sure what 2024 will hold. I’ve already sensed God stirring the waters a little, getting me ready for some changes—exactly what kind of changes and to what extent, I’m not sure yet. He’s rocked the boat, and only time will tell if He’s going to loose my moorings and point me in a new direction, capsize the boat entirely, or simply readjust the cargo in the hold.

If God has exotic adventure in my future, I won’t say no.

But if I continue in Colorado, or stateside, or in these ordinary jobs, I won’t object either.

Because, after these years of change and growth, and after 2023 in particular, I can truly say, with my hero Taran, that turnips and horseshoes aren’t so bad after all.