I love summer. I live for being warm.
Sunshine and warmth bring me so much joy that I've made Southern California my permanent home. I always knew despite the ways my life would morph and change over the years I would need a few things to remain constant, and one of those was sunshine. Permanent summer.
The reason I knew this was because growing up, summer was just a season, and one that never lasted long enough.
I grew up in a little town smack dab in the middle of Washington state and because we sat in a rain shadow of the Cascade Mountains we got four very distinct seasons each year. Crisp, color-changing falls. Frigid, snowy winters. Cool, wet springs. And blazing, HOT summers.
I've just returned from a quick visit to my hometown after over 4 years away and the heat that I was so excited for leading up to my trip, the heat that I spent all my childhood summers living in wearing nothing but my swimsuit and not enough sunscreen... THAT heat this time around was nearly unbearable.
In the couple days I spent in town I was jumping from one patch of shade to the next. I kept asking myself, "What happened to me? Why does this heat I used to live for feel so different to me now?"
The truth is, the heat was not the only thing that felt unnatural being home. Despite the trip being extremely short, I went to and passed through dozens of very familiar places, some of which house deep core memories. It isn't a big town so I was ready for this, but like the heat, I wasn't ready for the way it would make me feel.
I left my hometown in 2006 to go to college and have returned numerous times to visit and even live for short periods of time. Our little town has developed immensely over the last 20 years. It has become home to thousands of people who perhaps never even knew it existed in the days that I called it home myself. Old stores and buildings have disappeared, orchards have been wiped out to build new neighborhoods, and almost every friend I had there has moved on as well. So each time I have returned to visit something has surely changed.
So why did THIS trip feel so different?
As I sat on my flight back to Orange County I meditated on why being in my hometown felt the most foreign it had ever felt. Maybe this time it wasn't about the old buildings that had been torn down or the new roads that were built that made me feel out of place. Maybe this time it was because new construction has also been happening inside of me.
Today I turn 37 and this last trip around the sun has been without a doubt the most transformative one yet. I have finally begun to break behaviors and coping mechanisms that have been dragging me through the dirt for a decade. What is most transformative of all is that I have finally accepted that I will have to work to maintain this newfound peace for my entire life. The life I am choosing to build now isn’t a chapter. It isn’t a season.
Then it hit me.
I have adapted out of the version of me that ever existed inside the city limits of my hometown. Adapted from the version of me that visited over the last 20 years, and especially the version of me in the last 10.
The odd feeling I was experiencing being home wasn't because I wasn't absolutely enjoying every moment I was having with my family, because I was. It was perfect. But perhaps it was because I was still in some ways trying to wear the skin of the girl who used to live there. Trying to fit myself into the mold of a woman who was constantly putting on and taking off layers to acclimate to changing seasons instead of taking the time let her body adapt into her true and natural self.
The reality of life is that we do go through seasons. I have so many seasons I am still looking forward to such as the warm seasons of love, marriage, and hopefully children. And some I am not looking forward to, like the cold and dark seasons of losing people I love deeply.
My hope and my goal as I continue to grow spiritually in this next trip around the sun is that instead of "acclimating" to change and seeking to ease the way I feel in an uncomfortable season, I'll simply learn to "adapt."
Believe it or not, there is a difference. "Adaptation" refers to evolutionary changes in organisms over generations, while "acclimation" is a short-term physiological response to environmental changes. And boy, short-term is a lot easier, especially when all I'm thinking of is myself. But I've lived that way long enough.
Seeking comfort in my uncomfortable seasons used to be my top priority and it is exactly what drug me through the dirt for a decade (maybe even more) and so now I'm learning to lean on my faith in a power greater than myself instead of temporary comforts. I believe it can be possible for me to find joy in the low seasons of stinging cold or high seasons overwhelming heat that life can throw at me. Won't it make those seasons of shedding the old leaves and the buds of new flowers all that more beautiful?
Perhaps then, no matter where I call home, whether it be in a place with four distinct seasons or a place with permanent summer, I'll have an inner comfort and inner peace knowing I don't need layers to put on and take off to acclimate.
I'll no longer fear discomfort. I'll just adapt.
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