I suppose it’s a little ironic that I’m blogging about Beginnings today from my hometown, Creston, Iowa.
I was born here, raised here, and spent the first eighteen years of my life here.
It’s a small town…I think at its largest it was around 10,000 people; now it’s closer to 9,000.
Tobin and I were just talking about what people do for fun here. When we come for a visit, there is a lot of down time. Especially when we’d visit for 1-2 weeks during summers between Indonesia, we had to find creative ways to occupy our time. We’d go running, we’d go to the park and play bocce ball, we’d play cribbage, we’d visit my brother at the Coffee Shack, we’ d go to Walmart.
Really. (And everyone knows how much I adore Walmart. :P)
We laughed because we found ourselves at Walmart twice today…and joked that it’ s what people do this time of year for fun. I’m not sure that’s true…but there were a lot of people there. 
The local high school is around 400 students, which isn’t tiny. There are plenty of opportunities for a high school student, especially if they are athletic or musical, and I even took advantage of a few of those when I attended there.
In a small town, everyone knows everyone, and that can be a good thing and sometimes not. However, another observation I had today was the stunning realization that I’ve been gone almost as long as I lived here. Because of that, I don’t run into people I know as often as I used to.
Growing up, small town life was all I knew, but I always longed for something…
Different.
Bigger.
I left home at eighteen and never really came home. There were/are visits, but this isn’t home.
I used to resent growing up here; I am slowly growing out of that.
Because this is the place I began, and while it’s not all I always dreamed of, it’s part of who I am. And I choose to take those pieces of my beginning and be just that.
Because we can’t choose our beginning…but we can choose what we do with it.
Thank you, God, for beginnings.
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