Image: ©Tara Winstead via Canva.com
Last Thursday night, God brought me a full circle moment. In my Journey to Boston (Part 1), I talked about the moment I fell in love with Boston. The post has the picture I took at that very moment. On Monday of last week a family member texted me to see if I still live in Boston. We made plans to attend the Red Sox game on Wednesday night. The day of I texted him to confirm our plans were still on and to nail down the details. I sent a message saying I would have to come late after a meeting. The message was sent Wednesday morning. I looked back and the time stamp said it didn’t send until 5 hours after I thought it went through. So due to a miscommunication we didn’t end up going to the game together.
We tried to make plans for the following day but I had an event from 5-7pm and he and his wife were going on an evening cruise at 7pm. Right before 5pm my event was canceled so I texted and he said they were already at a restaurant. I hopped in an Uber at rush hour and somehow made it in enough time to eat dinner with them. When they left for their cruise, I decided to walk around the area. I started walking up the street the restaurant was on, it was a charming Charlestown street with houses of every color. As I walked up the street I thought about how this street reminded me of the street that I took a picture of in 2018 but the cars were parked the wrong way. I remember this because I had to edit out their front license plates before I posted the picture. I took a right and the first street I met looked familiar. I pulled out my phone and I pulled up the Instagram picture to see if this was THE STREET. It was and I stood in the middle of the road and I snapped a picture in that moment. If my message went through Wednesday instead of a technical glitch or my event didn’t get cancelled or Uber prices were insanely high at rush hour, circumstances wouldn’t have aligned for me to be on that street.
I haven’t been back to Charlestown since the day I took the first picture. It’s really far from where I live and I’ve just never really had a reason to go. I didn’t know the name or the location of the street really. I knew it was somewhere between Bunker Hill and the North End. Earlier this week, after I posted my prior blog post I was thinking of how I should go back before I move and life did it for me. I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting lately. I think that’s a common thing to do when you know one season of life is ending, especially a really good one. Writing blog posts about the last fews years of my life has me thinking of all the little pieces that came together for me to get here.
Standing in the exact place where I fell in love with Boston has me thinking about where I was in life when I first met that street. It makes me think about all the pieces that came together to build my life today. It makes me think God was moving the pieces all the way back in 2018 and I had no idea he was doing it. He was lining them up for me. He was lining up one of the best years of my life and one of the best parts of my journey. As I stood on that street tonight, I thought of the girl I was when I last stood there and how if I told her she would move to Boston, she would launch two business, she would find happiness again and she would do it all without an inkling of a relationship along the way, she certainly wouldn’t believe me.
God brought me to that hill as a reminder. Right now he’s moving the pieces again but I can feel them. I can’t see them. I have a gut feeling about part of it. I’ve known that feeling since 2018. If he does what I think he’s going to do, he’s weaving all the pieces into one of the most incredible stories that I can’t wait to tell. In this moment right now, I do not have a relationship, I do not have a job, I do not know where I will end up, I know none of the pieces to the puzzle but I do know who holds that puzzle. I know he did it for me before and he will do it for me again.