This morning I drove into Hopewell, NJ to find a NAPA Auto Parts Store to get a bulb for my headlight. And I realized something.
I like small towns.
Now, I love big cities, and the rush you get, and the excitement, and the cultural opportunities and the restaurants, and…yah, you know all that they have to offer.
But there is something about small towns. There was something about my time living in Hagerman, ID and working in Wendell, ID that I loved so much, even if small-town church politics (and small-town social-politics, for that matter) did get to me every now and then. I loved knowing that I could find the same woman working in the Post Office every day and that she’d always be friendly to me. I loved knowing that my bank tellers at US Bank in Wendell would deposit my checks, but they also wanted to know how I was (and even sing Happy Birthday to me when they found out it was birthday checks I was depositing). I loved (most of the time) that I knew I could see friends and people from the church when I went to shop at Simerley’s. I loved knowing that the one cop who would always see me speeding went to our church, and he had a lot of grace with me (I also loved knowing that if you saw the Wendell cop at one end of town, you were safe to speed in the other half of town). I loved calling up Papa Kelsey’s Sub Shop in Wendell and they knew from the sound of my voice who I was and what I wanted to order.
Who knows where Sarah and I are going to end up (we certainly don’t) but I do know that if we felt called to a smaller town for a season of our lives…I think that’d be just fine.