Wrap-Around Porch Syndrome, Part 2: Inman, My Heart, and the Planet

November 26, 2018

Driving Marv

Elders, post-Book of Mormon class

Sisters' p-day

Goats at the Tolmans'

Light Up Inman

Don't make me go.

Sister Larsen & Kelsey

Family.

The Rushs

The Suns, ft. Sri Racha

Shelby & Cam, beauty in a photograph

My hermanas

At the Walters' farm

Melissa Poggio, our best friend

Sister Sith

Joanne, who didn't want me to see her cry when I left

Snow in South Carolina

Christmas from Inman

Dan & Pat

Bubba's Diner

John 3:16

Bug Friend

Loved.

The Life-Changer

I've started and restarted writing this five times and I've come to the conclusion that if I were to memorize every word in the English language I still couldn't come up with the right combination to describe these happenings right here.

All the above pictures were taken between the dates of September 20th, 2017 and January 23rd, 2018. You'll notice most of them have me in them. That's fitting. In Charleston, I was an observer -- taking pictures, experiencing the city. But in Inman, though I was there for only about four months, I was a part of it. I told someone once, "when I got there, it felt like I'd always been there. And it feels like I'm still there today." And it's true -- there was something about that place that I really can't explain, but it will always be with me.

It might be because it was around this point in my mission that I stopped trying so hard to share a message and started listening to other people. It might be because I was finally so tired of pretending to be a specific person that I wasn't, and so I just gave up and started being me.

That's all transformative and life-changing. But I also kind of think maybe there's a side of the reason that wasn't so big and important, like the place itself. Inman is a small, unassuming sort of place, and I think, in a way, that provided some comfort, a home for me and my quieter, more pedestrian dreams. I mellowed out there. I didn't have to be anything more than what I am; I was just enough. I could be the girl who just wanted a quiet life on the farm with her family, and that somehow seemed to me the most profoundly beautiful thing in the world.

There's this long long list in my mind of encounters, experiences, and mostly people from Inman who changed my life. Perhaps no one's name is bolder than Sharalyn Larsen, pictured above, who proved to me that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true without any clever words or scripture verses -- simply by living with hope for the future.

There are plenty of other names I could mention, lists and lists beyond lists, and I could tell you scores of things about each person, and write entire books, but really, I don't want to write about Inman, I want to get on a plane and go back. I originally wrote "come back", which is terribly reflective -- my heart lives there.

To most people Inman is a town you drive through; so next time you're tempted to simply get to where you're going, stand still for a minute. Take it all in. Don't speed by and keep yourself from meeting someplace like this little milling village that was really entirely more significant than that sounds. Maybe something will happen -- maybe it won't. But you might just find the center of the planet, the rotating point for the rest of your universe, like I did.