It was 2009 when my husband realized that his position as Branch Manager for a small business in Utah was unsustainable, he began a job search. Neither of us had any desire to leave the Cache Valley of Northern Utah. We had been there for five years and it was home. When the job search began, his first inquiry was with a solid, reputable company just north of the Twin Cities in Minnesota. Because he had an equally solid professional relationship with the company they were eager to talk to him and asked him to come in for an in person interview. That year, January of 2010, he boarded a Delta flight in Salt Lake and flew to Minneapolis with me, his most reluctant partner.

I was reluctant for many reasons but most of all because I was in my second semester of study at Utah State University working on a Special Education endorsement. It was an intense program that left little room for anything else. I had no desire to squeeze in a quick trip to the Minnesota tundra for an interview to a place I had predetermined that I was not going to move to. But my husband really wanted to work for them and for that reason alone, I agreed to go along.

We arrived in Minneapolis and its winter chill did not disappoint. The weather was just like it is there today brutally cold. The airport was the largest one I had ever been to and quite impressive. I had rarely seen so many people of color working in one place and I had never been in close proximity to that many women wearing Muslim clothing. I found it fascinating.

The drive from the airport to Cambridge took us straight through the city of Minneapolis. We passed the Metrodome, where the Vikings played football and a bit further up the road, the U of M where the Golden Gophers suffered many a defeat to our Husker alma mater. Neither of us had much of an idea what else might be there. Going north on I-35 we passed by smaller metro suburbs with interesting names like Little Canada, White Bear Lake and Forrest Lake, all indicators that we were definitely “up north”.

We made it to Cambridge, settled into the hotel then decided to drive around and see what we could see. We went over some railroad tracks as we headed into the main part of town and I immediately told my husband I could not live there. I was dead serious and would have headed back to Utah that second if I could have. He asked me to hang in there and I said I would but could fathom no reason to change my mind.

My husband, daughter and I had been in Utah for five years before this day in 2010. It had been a very healing place where the earth itself had wrapped its arms around us and gave us solace to continue in spite of so many difficult challenges. Hiking, biking and just sitting in my yard with the incredible views in any direction had soothed me in ways that kept me grounded and I did not want to give that up. We had also acquired an incredible social network and I was loving the experience of being a student again at USU. I simply loved my life as it was and had zero desire to live anywhere else. Driving into the small Minnesota town in the dead of winter offered little to change my mind. But as can happen when you love someone and want the best for them, I did just that.

I was asked to join my husband after his main interview and was asked by the owners what I thought about his opportunity to work for them. I honestly said that it was unexpected and would be a challenge but that I wanted him to succeed. As we left the business I knew that there was only one way forward and that way was through my husband taking this job and us making the move to Cambridge, Minnesota. And though I was not happy about it, I willingly pivoted and sought to make it work. I only asked that I would be able to complete my Special Education training. He agreed and off we were.

I finished the semester in Utah and joined him doe the summer. In the fall I returned to Utah to do my 9 weeks of student teaching and made it back to Minnesota just after Halloween. I arrived and 12″ of snow fell the next day. A week later 12 more. By December 10th there was so much snow that the roof on the Metrodome collapsed! I had never experiences so much snow in my life.

Moving to Minnesota that year was as difficult as anything I had ever done and it never got easier to stay there. What would turn out to be an experience that would become life-threatening, would also become an experience that would be transformational. I will attempt to articulate in the next series of posts how moving there challenged me and how I truly found a deeper sense of self than I ever thought possible. I will share about the reality that moving to Cambridge forced me to re-enter an Evangelical conservative culture again and how the stress from it would begin a deeper spiritual and religious deconstruction than what I had already undertaken in Utah. I would learn how the process would impact my psychological and physical well being more than I could ever have imagined. I will also share how much I learned about cultural, ethnic and racial influences living so close to Minneapolis and St. Paul and how those forces expanded my worldview and changed me.

Franciscan Catholic Father Richard Rohr wrote a book in 2011 called Falling Upward which quite literally came to me that year as if it were a manual from God informing me that I was going to fall… and fall hard. It was as if he looked into a crystal ball and was told to write it for me, for my future. This is the Amazon description of the book.

Most of us tend to think of the second half of life in chronological terms, but this book proposes a different paradigm. Spiritual maturity is found “when we begin to pay attention and seek integrity” through a shift from our “outer task” to the “inner task.” What looks like falling down can be experienced as falling upward―and is not necessarily connected with aging… Falling Upward is an invitation…

It is because of that invitation and my accepting it that I am here today. Forces bigger than I almost took me out from 2011 until about 2018. That season was traumatic and required deep inner work just to stay alive. It came on the heels of one before it that was equally so.

I need to write about it. Perhaps as a kind of therapy. I just know, I am finally ready.

May my journey be helpful to you.

More to come.