Moving into Indianapolis and settling into Apartment 2A was the first adult decision I made for myself.

Most of college ending and the summer that followed are blurry in my mind, but the moments I do remember are so vivid. Victoria and I sat in the parking lot of River Crossing waiting for our scheduled apartment tour for almost twenty minutes. While we sat in the car, we chatted about the little stuff – when she was going to get a spray tan for her 24th birthday, what I had recently purchased at J.Crew, and we also talked about the big stuff. We were both dealing with some confusion towards God and splintered hearts, and it felt so good to be able to hear someone say, “I know what you’re going through, and it’s going to get better.” As we walked through the vacant three bedroom apartment, trying not to seem too excited, we dreamed of the events we could hold at our apartment and the new and old relationships that the space could foster. We decided that this was the place for us.

In the two years since we moved in, painted accent walls, hosted too many parties to count, studied the book of James, danced in the kitchen, cried on the couches, and tried on clothes in my closet, I’m moving out. I’m leaving the place where I started to build my life. I’m leaving part of myself in that space, in the sweet and painful memories, but taking so much more of myself into this new season, and into a new home.

There will be new kitchen dance parties, new traditions to create, new memories to make, new friends to care for and a new (shorter!) commute to and from work. There will be new parts of myself I am able to discover and new rhythms to establish.

I know all these things, and yet I’m mourning Apartment 2A. In may ways, it was the line I drew in the sand and said there’s no turning back now. It’s been a defining season mixed with decisions I made and others made for me culminating one big decision – to step into adulthood here in Indianapolis trusting God to mold me into the woman He wanted me to be. It was here that I held out my shaking hands before the Lord and said, “Here’s my life, every messy piece of it, use it for Your glory.”

It was here that I learned that surrender isn’t always done with arms held confidently in the air, but it does mean that there’s no going back. To how things used to be or who you used to be.