June 23, 2025: The Bigger Life

This moment in my dorm room changed everything.

Graduation loomed. I had nearly finished my undergrad degree in Georgia, but I wasn’t sure what lay ahead. The future awaited like a thick fog.

Do I go back home to North Carolina? Take a leap to a big city like New York or LA? Every blurry option contained possibility.

And then one night I found myself alone, an unusual occurrence. Playing soft music from a CD, I knelt in the middle of a rug and whispered a simple prayer.

God, I don’t want to get up until I know what to do next.

Somewhere in those moments, maybe an hour later, a deep clarity settled in. And for the first time, with certainty, I knew.

But it required moving to a place I had never considered (or even visited) and doing the unexpected….

Virginia Beach, Virginia for a graduate program.

It was crazy risky. More classes. Few connections. No source of income. But somehow, I felt it in my bones.

So I went. And that one decision sparked a chain reaction of events… jobs, conversations, twists… which miraculously led me to Jess, five children, and 28 years of marriage.

Today I thought about that experience when I came across this quote:

“When we’re not sure how to decide, we should choose the bigger life.”
– Gretchen Rubin

Over the years, I’ve shared this wisdom with my kids, trying to live it myself, though imperfectly. And I’ve repeated something along these lines to them:

When you have the choice between watching a game on TV or hanging out with friends?
Hang out with friends.

Staying in an unsatisfying job or making a change?
Make the change.

When you can sit it out or dance?
Dance.

That last line is from a country song, but you get the drift.

Pick the path with more possibility, the step that stretches, the scarier road, the move that obliterates the pros-and-cons list. The one full of life.

It leads to amazing places.