The next seven months were surreal.
I was in disbelief.
It didn’t seem real.
Three and a half years of hoping, wishing and praying. Hiring a life coach. Meditating. Setting intentions. Creating vision boards. Speaking my dream out loud. Doing everything I knew to do to move myself closer to the life I could already see so clearly in my mind.
And now, finally, it was time.
The time was here.
I was in shock.
Happily in shock, but still in shock.
I remember calling my best friend from the car and hearing her scream with excitement.
“Finally!”
She told me she knew it was coming. She knew I could do it.
Another friend said almost the same thing: “I knew it was coming. I knew you could do it.”
But as I shared in an earlier article, there were people I didn’t call.
I didn’t call one family member.
I couldn’t.
I had spent three and a half years protecting this dream. Protecting my goal. Protecting myself. And now I was standing at the finish line, preparing to move to another country and leave the country of my birth behind.
This was huge.
And I needed to protect the dream all the way to the end.
Seven Months of Preparation
I told my boss that I had received the job offer, but moving overseas with the federal government isn’t something that happens overnight.
There was an entire onboarding process ahead of me.
Ultimately, it took seven months. When I arrived in Naples, I was told that mine had been one of the fastest overseas onboarding processes they had seen!
I was laser-focused.
By that point, I had worked in federal Human Resources for ten years. I understood federal processes. I knew what questions to ask, what needed to happen next and when I needed to follow up.
What I didn’t know was the overseas onboarding process.
I learned very quickly.
And, as always, the right person appeared at exactly the right time.
One of my coworkers had previously worked overseas in Naples. She understood the process and became an incredible resource for me. She answered questions, explained things I didn’t understand and helped make the transition much smoother.
I had prayed for people to be placed along my path who could help me.
And there she was.
Right on time.
God knows exactly what you need. Spirit knows exactly what you need.
Divine timing is always on time.
Taking Apart the Life I Had Built
For the rest of that year and the first two months of the next, I prepared.
And prepared.
And prepared.
I started getting rid of things I no longer needed. I went through closets, drawers, paperwork, photographs and years of memories.
I had lived in my apartment for about seven years. It was the longest I had lived anywhere during my adult life.
My life was there.
That apartment represented an entire chapter of who I had been.
And now I had to decide what pieces of that life were coming with me and what I was ready to leave behind.
The process was slow, not only emotionally, but administratively.
This was 2020 and early 2021. We were still in the middle of COVID. Everything moved differently. Everything took longer. People were being cautious, offices were operating differently, and this certainly wasn’t a normal time to be coordinating an international move.
I was also getting my first taste of Italian bureaucracy through the overseas onboarding process.
The culture was different.
The pace was different.
But I didn’t care.
I had one goal: Get to Italy.
Whatever paperwork needed to be completed, I completed it.
Whatever appointment needed to happen, I waited for it.
Whatever I needed to do, I did it.
I had spent too long dreaming about this life to become impatient when I was finally on my way to it.
The Signs Were Still There
As the departure date moved closer, I continued noticing the signs and synchronicities that had followed me throughout this journey.
In an earlier article, I shared the significance of Mark 2:18 and Exodus 20:8-10 and how those scriptures came to me in church in 2018.
Then it was time to schedule my flight to Italy.
The date?
February 18.
2/18.
My birthday.
At first, I thought, I don’t want to fly on my birthday.
I don’t particularly enjoy flying, and surely spending my birthday on an international flight wasn’t what I would have chosen.
But then I saw it.
2/18.
Mark 2:18 and Exodus 20:8-10. Also, 2:08 is the time of my birth!
The scriptures that had become part of this journey.
The date of my birth.
And now, the date I would leave the United States to begin my new life.
There was nothing left for me to question.
That was my day.
God’s timing.
Another synchronicity.
So, on my birthday, February 18, I left the United States.
A Season of Lasts
As the departure grew closer, I became very aware of the “lasts.”
My last Christmas living in the United States.
My last New Year’s.
The last times I would see certain friends before leaving.
The last ordinary moments in a country that had been home my entire life.
Things I normally wouldn’t have thought twice about suddenly carried meaning because I knew this chapter was ending.
And as I packed and sorted through my belongings, I found old photographs.
Memories.
People I loved who were no longer here in the physical world.
There is something about preparing to completely change your life that makes you look backward before you can move forward.
I looked at those pictures and thought about everything I had experienced. Everything I had survived. Everything I had accomplished.
And the people who had helped shape the woman who was now preparing to move across the world.
I thought especially about my grandmother Delores. My rock star.
She taught me never to give up.
She believed in living your life. She believed in going after what you wanted and simply going for it.
While I was going through my things, I found a note she had written to me for my 30th birthday.
And there I was, years later, preparing to leave the United States on another birthday to pursue one of the biggest dreams of my life.
It was very emotional. Bittersweet.
She wasn’t physically there to see it.
But I knew she was there.
I believe the people we love don’t simply disappear. They remain with us in spirit. They encourage us. They protect us. They remind us of who we are when we need it most.
And I knew my grandmother was somewhere saying: Go.
I Was Ready
There were so many emotions during those seven months.
Excitement.
Disbelief.
Gratitude.
Sadness.
Anticipation.
There was the life I had known, and the life waiting for me on the other side of the Atlantic.
But underneath all of those emotions was something else: Peace.
I had prayed for this.
I had worked for this.
I had visualized it.
I had protected it.
And when the moment finally arrived, I didn’t need anyone else’s permission to go.
I had the support of the friends who believed in me. I had the people who appeared along the way exactly when I needed them. I had the love and guidance of those who were no longer physically here but whose presence I still carried with me.
Most importantly, I knew I had been guided here.
Three and a half years earlier, Italy was a dream.
Then it became an intention.
Then a plan.
Then an opportunity.
And now it was a plane ticket.
On February 18, I was leaving the United States.
I was leaving behind the familiar.
And I was finally going home to the life I had been creating for years.
When it was time to go, I was ready.
Next Up…
I’ll share what it felt like to leave the United States behind, the best plane ride of my life, and the moment I finally landed in Italy.