I Didn't Graduate From Here

I’m not in this picture, but I wish I were.

When people ask where I grew up, I respond with “DeTour Village, on the eastern tip of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.” That’s where we lived from 3^rd grade through 10^th grade (with a break for 6^th grade when we were on sabbatical in Edinburgh, Scotland). But my father was a minister, and he took a call to Lake City, Michigan between my sophomore and junior years.

It was not my choice.

I was a shy teen, and I didn’t want to move. Although I wasn’t popular, at least I knew where I stood and how I fit in. When we moved, I didn’t have even that.

In many ways, the move improved my lot. At both places, I was active in the church, singing in the choir and doing things with the youth group. But the only school activity available at DeTour was cheerleading, and I couldn’t even do a split. Lake City had a high school chorus and a forensics club, and I participated in both. And since Lake City was located in a more populated area, I got to take violin lessons.

But I still missed my old high school, and I never felt as if I belonged in the new one.

My church installed a new senior pastor yesterday. He moved his six children in the middle of the school year, and the oldest two are in high school.

Obviously, I survived my high school move, and Sam and Ella will survive theirs, too. God doesn’t ask us to do anything we can’t handle with His help.

Still, I pray that their new high school feels more like home to them than mine did to me.