Today I want to share with you The Really Big Thing. Let's just get it out of the way that, no, I am not pregnant. I realize in reading back that maybe the way I've talked about this thing, it would be easy to read that into this.
The Really Big Thing is that our family is on the cusp of a paradigm shift that is at once entirely surprising and yet completely expected: we've decided that the time has come for us to leave coaching.
This conclusion began processing last January, and we've spent so much time since then walking back and forth with our thoughts. Projecting trajectories. Envisioning outcomes. Skipping ahead to the last page.
I love this perspective on paradigm shift from taketheleap.org that states
It's a revolution, a transformation, a sort of metamorphosis. It just does not happen, but rather it is driven by agents of change.
Our agents of change? Observe exhibits A and D:
(gosh, they have changed so much since the end of last December!)
We are hoping someday God will invite us to once again co-create with Him, and that we'll get to add a little exhibit B ("B" is for blue, right?) and maybe even an exhibit C to the mix. And the thing about the coaching business (and, oh, it is a business to be sure) is that it is just relentless in its demands for time.
But we've had fun - so much fun! - in our years in coaching. From 0-10 seasons (yes, more than one) to weeks soaring through the Division I Top 25, we've experienced it all. Conference cellar-dwellers and conference champs. I hold close to my heart my memories of a bowl game in Memphis that allowed me to experience Graceland and Beale Street and the waddling ducks of the Peabody Hotel. If it weren't for traveling with The Coach and the team, I am sure I would have never seen the Chicago skyline gleaming in mid-September sun, nor would I have gotten to saunter through the French Quarter, nibbling a beignet and breathing in New Orleans in all its pre-Katrina glory.
But my husband, The Coach, sees the mind-boggling rate at which our girls are growing and changing, and he just can't sign on for missing anymore of these precious and brief years we get to have them here at home. We are leaving coaching so that he can begin a career as a financial analyst with a well-known and much-respected nationwide investment firm, and he embarks into this new career in just under three weeks.
In the explanation of paradigm shift above, it mentions metamorphosis. That's what this feels like to us. It reminds me of a favorite selection of mine from Trina Paulus's Hope for the Flowers:
"How does one become a butterfly?" she asked pensively.
"You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar."
In my mind's eye, I see our little family starting out ten years ago when we got married. Everything about us was little bitty, just like the caterpillar who springs forth on the leaf. As we partook of all that life offered to us, we swelled with growth. Three years ago, we expanded from two to three, and we grew again when this sweet baby arrived last September.
And now feels like a good time to wrap ourselves in a cocoon of transformation. Gone will be the notoriety and notability, the fame and infamy, that has marked so much of our identity for the past decade as we look towards a path that is both more stable and yet infinitely more scary than the path from which we thought we would never stray.
In addition to this change in career, we are also leaving behind this community in this state that we have grown to love so much. We are being shepherded home, back to Oklahoma, the state where neither of us were born but both of us were raised. Back to parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and high school friends and college friends and peaches and lakes and Indian tacos and grassy plains that stretch on for miles.
The cocoon that invites us to this change will be, in the beginning, a quite literal one as we will be living with Kyle's parents for the rest of the summer while my husband studies and trains. The same home where he knelt and proposed to me is the same home that will house us until we are ready to launch forth, unfurl our wings, and live life in an altogether different incarnation than we ever thought we'd be.
Bittersweet? Absolutely. My heart aches for the life we are leaving behind. I miss it already.
In the meantime, just know that life in this house is chaotic beyond words. Piles and stacks and lists and boxes abound. My time online in the coming days, weeks, and months will be sketchy, at best. I do so love engaging in conversation through emailed replies to comments, but that is probably not going to be happening for a little while. A measure of grace is my small request.
Thanks for letting me pour out my heart. There's more, but for now, I feel better having said this.
That's The Really Big Thing.