When I was writing the September article for this column on taking risks and making big changes in late July, I didn’t know that, a few weeks after writing and submitting it, I would actually be practicing what I preached less than a month later. Living 33 years on Earth has taught me that life is full of twists and turns in both good and bad directions. Occasionally, what seems like a major inconvenience or setback on the surface may be the door opening to a better hallway.

I thought my summer would conclude with a trip to Hawaii and, after landing back in North Carolina, I would drive home to my apartment in Winston-Salem and greet my cat before going to sleep, waking up the next day and resuming life as usual. I’d had to back out of a trip to Hawaii the year prior, so this time around, I was certain nothing was going to come between me and a few fish tacos overlooking the Pacific Ocean in paradise. Who would have thought a rapid influx of greenhouse millipedes infesting my first-floor apartment (thanks to a brand new mulch bed and a bustling kudzu forest outside of my front door) over the span of two months would have been the start of a new beginning – especially one that I had considered out of reach for the foreseeable future?

Prior to moving into my current Winston-Salem apartment in March, I told my mom how I’d eventually like to live near the coast so I could take walks on the beach, be near coastal birds and riverwalks with alligators and enjoy vitamin D a bit more than I am able to in the Triad. I told her that I thought about moving to Wilmington, but I wasn’t in a place to facilitate that move emotionally or financially. Months later, when multiple pest control treatments failed to remedy my millipede issue, and I got tired of living in a terrarium, the property managers offered to let me out of my lease penalty free – a true luxury in the life of renters. Initially, I pushed the thought aside and was prepared to simply be transferred to a different unit, because my Hawaii vacation was coming up and I had been saving money all summer for shaved ice and food trucks. I couldn’t give up this trip – until I realized a lot of apartment complexes in the Wilmington area were offering move-in specials that were too hard to dismiss. The thought began consuming my mind like a parasite, and within 24 hours, I applied to an apartment in Wilmington. A few days later, I was set to move in less than 30 days. I canceled my Hawaiian Airbnb, my flights and my rental car and surprisingly didn’t even shed a tear. I believed deep down that God was showing me an exit, and I would have been an idiot to pass it up. Thankfully, the money I had been saving for what I thought was Kona coffee and banana bread came in handy for apartment application fees, deposits and moving supplies.

I thought I was only lucky enough to have such a setback-turned-blessing just this once, but the aftershock was felt a couple of weeks later. I ordered a small sofa online and began running into multiple hiccups throughout the shipping process with a major US shipping and freight carrier. It was beginning to look like the delays were going to prevent the sofa from arriving before I vacated my current address, and my stress level was through the roof. After multiple very assertive customer service calls, urgent tickets and moments where I wanted to pull my hair out, the sofa manufacturer offered to deliver a new item straight to my new apartment instead of my current address, relieving me of the burden of loading it onto the moving truck myself. Yet another nuisance and perceived injustice that turned out for the better. 

It’s too soon to tell how well my move will go, whether I’ll be happier by the coast or if I’m making a mistake, but at least I’m making something – only with a bit more experience and faith that God has a way of working things out in ways you least expect.