Adventure: Accepted.

It's been almost 2 weeks since my husband accepted his job offer and my mind has been racing ever since.

We'd talked about different places to go once we graduated and I only had 3 requests: I didn't want to live in California, Arizona, or anywhere in the East. We had set out sights on Dallas and were confident that we were gong to stay in the western states. So imagine my shock when one day Sam mentioned that he had applied for a job in Charlotte, North Carolina.

If you aren't quite sure, that's 2060 miles from my home base in American Fork, Utah. That's 2146 miles from my home in Rexburg, Idaho. That 2000+ miles from anything that I know. Let's just throw in the fact that the closest Cafe Rio is 372 miles and the Columbia South Carolina Temple is 100 miles away. If you're familiar with my usual stomping grounds, the nearest Cafe Rio is about 15 minutes away and the temple has always been around the corner.

Now I need to get out of my head that we're moving away from Zion to Babylon. The problem is that I really think we are. After being born and raised in Utah County, I'm not sure how my sheltered mind will handle the real world. I often find myself reading the news from the Charlotte area and am constantly looking for other bloggers to prep me for the things to come.

When we first talked about moving out there I really just wanted to have a baby. I knew that it would be hard, but I thought that I would rather stay in my apartment all day with the doors locked and the blinds closed to avoid having to go out and figure out what I was doing in a strange land. After praying about it and really thinking about being pregnant and moving I felt like I was supposed to wait. Despite how many pregnancy apps I downloaded to my phone, how many baby articles I read, and how many times I looked pictures of our friend's babies, I couldn't tell myself that it was the right time. Since I didn't feel like it was the right time, I started checking out the local school district for jobs.

I don't have a job yet. In fact, I haven't even applied for any, but I spend most of my nights looking through the different school facebook pages and websites simply because I don't believe that people actually live past the Utah/Idaho boarder. I'm drawn to these people because I know that they've been raised differently than me, that they look different than me, and I know that for once I'll be living somewhere that I might be the only Mormon. Somewhere that is going to have a break room with a coffee machine and I may be the only person that doesn't have a clue how it works. Somewhere that people don't look at me and say "Yep. She's a Mormon."What an odd concept.

We aren't in Charlotte yet. But I feel like I've just opened my mission call and have been preparing since that job offer got signed- I've got the "Read the Book of Mormon in 90 days" hanging next to my bed to prove it. Maybe I was having a revelation moment a few months back when I was dreaming that Sam and I were waiting for our mission call. Maybe this is it. Like I said, my mind has been racing ever since the offer was signed and I feel like my testimony is already being strengthened in so many ways. I'm really learning things that maybe I would've learned had we decided to stay in Idaho for 2 years for the MACC program a half hour away, and we haven't even moved.

One of the reasons that I'm afraid to move away from this Zion is the fact that bad things happen in the world. Bad things don't happen in Utah County or Rexburg, Idaho. The past couple of days I've come to realize that our Heavenly Father created a Plan of Happiness for us so that we could make it back to Him, not so that we could be puppets and make every right choice. As humans, we are given our agency to make decisions for ourselves. Others make their own decisions which might affect us. It is up to us to reach into our tool bag and use the things that our Heavenly Father has given us so that we can return back to Him, regardless of how hard it may be. The gospel of Jesus Christ and the atonement are a beautiful things and are put in place to help us to be resilient and make our short time on Earth worth everything we will learn.

The count down begins now. We're moving to Charlotte in a little under 6 months and never in my life have I felt like I was supposed to be somewhere so bad. I've never loved or been drawn so much to a place that I've never even been, or never before even considered going.

Here we go. To the adventure that I never expected. To a world completely different that the one that I'm used to....

Here we go to Charlotte.