Sometimes You Have to Move to Muleshoe

What did you say?!?

Where is that?!?

If you've ever lived in Muleshoe, Texas, you've heard these two questions from someone who asked where you are from.

Oh, they don't mean any offense; they just weren't ready to hear something that sounded so strange.

If you're still having trouble getting your mind around the name of this town, just think "horseshoe". Now, take that horseshoe, make it a little smaller, a little more rounded in shape, and you have a muleshoe! Yes, a mule is a different animal from a horse, and wears a different shoe, and that shoe has a town in the Texas panhandle named after it!

I'm proud to have lived in Muleshoe, Texas, from 2003-2007.

Kristi and I will always feel that our marriage truly got its start in this town. Both of our boys were born while we lived there, and we made lifelong friends during those four years. But if you had suggested to me earlier in my life that my path might take me through Muleshoe, I would have thought you were crazy, and how wrong I would have been!

Why did we move to Muleshoe?

For a job.

But what did Muleshoe end up meaning to us?

Far more than that.

It was our first experience living hundreds of miles from our parents, living in a place where no one from either of our families had ever lived, and where neither of us had any ties or history. This move was truly a plunge into the unknown.

Some people never do this. It's certainly not always the right thing to do, but I really believe that sometimes this is exactly what we need to do.

Sometimes the next chapter needs to be unfamiliar, distant, disconnected, disorienting, even...uncomfortable for a time. Sometimes the next opportunity needs to stretch us more than we want to be stretched. That feeling of displacement, and the time it takes to develop a new sense of home, will probably end up being the most important element of the entire experience, above and beyond whatever the original reason was for the move or the change.

What if you're not moving anytime soon?

No job change on the horizon?

That doesn't necessarily mean you don't need to move to Muleshoe.

What needs shaking up? Where are you so comfortable you can't imagine anything different? Who might be able to share a new perspective with you? Where have you never been before? How might you stretch yourself in the areas where things are familiar? Why not stretch?

A common misconception is that it's mainly people from places like Muleshoe who most need to get out and see the rest of the world. And sure, there can be truth to that; if all you've ever known is one small town, then yes, go see something different, stretch yourself by experiencing life in a bigger place with more moving parts and more to take in.

But this doesn't go just one way.

I would say, even if you've lived all your life someplace you consider to be cosmopolitan, the very nerve center of the world, if that is truly all you have ever known, then it may be high time you picked yourself up and moved to Muleshoe.

Even the supposed pinnacle of civilization can be a limiting perspective on life, if it's the only perspective you've ever had.

When it's time for the next opportunity, never assume it can't come in an unfamiliar package, that it has to come right there where you already are. Sometimes the very best opportunities lie in places you never thought you would go, in towns you never dreamed you might call home.

Muleshoe...check it out for yourself!