Patron Saint Of Changing Your Life

He is wooing you from the jaws of distress to a spacious place free from restriction, to the comfort of your table laden with choice food.

—Job 36:16

After my friend Kirsten and her husband bought a big fancy house with a big heavy mortgage, she said she felt like a grown-up—trapped in a job she didn’t love to pay a mortgage for a home she didn’t love.

They moved to Alameda, a beachy island across the bay, leaving the fancy house in the city still for sale. She said they were moving to save their lives and their marriage, and that the loss they took on the house was worth every penny, because it let them breathe again, live again.

Kirsten is my patron saint of changing your life, of not waiting for someone else to rearrange it for you, of not driving a good idea into the ground when it’s clear it isn’t working, of paying close attention to what you want and need and making it happen.

I thought of Kirsten when I finally said out loud, “This is what I want: I want to live near my family in a little house with lots of windows.” Not rocket science, but for a girl who sometimes can’t make a grocery list because I get so tangled up about what I want in life, a very big deal.