Going West — Why We Moved To Oakland, CA.
Oh the American west, such a weird, beautiful, broken, cool, unique place.
Last year, 2017, I graduated college, my wife (also a recent grad) was in need of a job, and with big bright eyes and a heart for adventure decided to pack up my tiny Honda Civic, and hit the open road to the magical land of Los Angeles, California.
My wife, Emily is an occupational therapist. At the time we lived in Louisville, KY where we both were raised most of our lives. The problem with Louisville is it’s such a great, affordable, and beautiful city was that no one wanted to leave. There was an over-saturation with OT’s coming from the main school downtown, so Emily was starting to get frustrated by not being able to get any real-world experience.
We decided once I graduated we would move somewhere temporarily so Emily could get some good work experience. As the date got closer to my graduation our anticipation rose for the next chapter of our lives. My freelance work was starting to get stagnant and I needed a new challenge, or maybe just a break to restart. The last few weeks before my graduation Emily made a few calls to some OT recruiters, looking to relocate for 12 weeks specifically to a place in the SF Bay Area. After weeks of the recruiter searching, we finally found a place a couple hours north of San Francisco in the vacation town of Lakeport, CA.
Feeling a little discouraged not to get a place in the Bay Area, we accepted our fate of living in one of the prettiest lakes in NorCal. Yeah, how awful. We drove from Kentucky through the plains of Missouri and Kansas to the Rockies and breathtaking National Parks in Utah and Colorado. This was when Emily got a call about her upcoming job the next week. Turns out they didn’t need her after the first week, but they had a position that just opened up for 13 weeks down in Hollywood. We were pretty ecstatic. We figured, without me having a job I could take the week in Lakeport to find a short-term lease or some kind of living arrangement that could accommodate us for the three months we were there.
Arriving in Lakeport, we realized it was probably for the best we got relocated down to southern California. The super small community that was only focused on tourists on vacation to the lake. “It’s only a week,” we told ourselves. I dropped Emily off at the nursing facility. 20 minutes later I get a call from Emily saying they don’t need her anymore. A little confused I go and pick her up, apparently there was a miscommunication and that they actually needed us down in Los Angeles as soon as possible. We canceled the rest of our hotel reservation and hit the road once again.
Los Angeles was hard. We didn’t know anyone, we had to bounce around our living spaces, oh and my car AC went out. LA was about to enter the short time of the year when the brutal summer heat comes to ruin your clothes with sweat stains on sweat stains. As hard as it was to live in LA without a place to stay we really fell in love with the city and the state of California. There is one glaring issue with California. The lack of real relationships and the lack of the love of Jesus. Too many people passionate about sharing the love of God have said that California is too expensive, people are too lost, it’s a lost cause. When we left to go back home to Louisville, we kept feeling a draw to move back. There’s hope for the people in the west. We fell in love with the beauty here and felt a calling to go back.
We got home in September. Relieved to be away from the traffic and back in our comfortable and affordable apartment we felt content. Back to our normal life. I was freelancing again and Emily was working a couple PRN positions (a medical term for freelancing). It was the end of the year and one of the pastor from our local community church announced he was uprooting his family and moving out to Oakland, CA in the SF Bay Area. Our hearts jumped. Emily was the first to say something and initially pushed the idea. She really felt God calling us to talk to the pastor and learn more about Oakland, the church vision, and life in the Bay Area. My initial reaction was a little hesitant, knowing the reputation that Oakland has (or at least had). We met up with Pastor James and his wife Desiree; an hour later we were already planning how we would make this move.
We continued to pray and meet with James and Desiree for a few more months. Their move date was the middle of June. After talking about the beauty of the are, diversity of the people, and the vibrancy of the city, we were sold on the “Brooklyn by the Bay.” Emily put out her resume to a few facilities in the Bay Area and within three days signed a job offer.
Once again, we packed up my little civic (and a larger shipping container with our furniture) and made the move out west. We planned a little week-long road trip to see some of America’s beautiful countries sides along the way. The first major stop was the Badlands in South Dakota. What a place. It was basically a desert when we got there. During the summers the park gets up to around 95–105 degrees and in the winter can get as low as 15–10 degrees. We watched the sunset over the crazy rock formations and then spent the night at our insect infested campground.
The next morning we drove another 10 hours to the border of Wyoming and Idaho to another little park called the Grand Tetons/Yellowstone. Without a doubt, these are some of the most beautiful parts of our country I have ever seen, rolling hills all the way up to a quaint valley where the city of Jackson is located dominated by views of the Grand Tetons. A few minutes north and you’ll be at the southern gates of Yellowstone National Park.
We were not able to do a whole lot that week besides a few national parks. We had to be in Oakland in time for Emily’s first day of work. The highlight was definitely The Grand Tetons. There was so much to do, one would have to spend an entire week there exploring. We decided to go horseback riding on a hike through the hills and around a section of Jackson Lake. The views were just to die for. We started the trail down a winding valley, slowly making our way uphill to the grand view of the Teton Valley below.
We spent the next day with Emily’s Aunt in Idaho and then made our way to Reno for the night. We could have driven all the way to the bay but decided to take it easy and layout by the pool instead. Driving into California was so surreal. It still doesn’t feel real yet to say that we live here, but we are excited for what God is doing here in the Bay.
We are still settling down in our new apartment. I’m job hunting and trying to pick up some freelance work on the side. Keep us in your thoughts and prayers during this time of transition. If you are interested in learning more about the church plant we are apart of the link to the preliminary is here: https://www.realmfellowship.org/
