Faith 58
To Hear the Silence Speak. For SheLoves Magazine.
The quiet is palpable but not heavy. In the way the warmth of a fire eases down into your very bones, the quiet here is the bearer of a strange kind of comfort. It isn’t the absence of sound. Every tiny noise reverberates off the white stone arches of the abbey. A monk coughs in the expanse between prayers. The squeaking of the wooden pews betrays the stillness. But what is found here is far deeper than the absence of sound.
“Silence is spoken here,” say the signs on the silent-dining-room tables. That’s it. The silence speaks. The Cistercian brothers that live in community in this monastery have carefully crafted and maintained it. They are the curators of silence. It’s what I come here time and time again to find. The silence has been built into something tangible and it speaks to your soul if you let it.
***
It’s never quiet here. The buildings fit together in this city like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The construction noise from the high-rise going up next to us is endless. Bang. Steel beams drop from a truck at one am. The next day we see more bricks have been added and are amazed that another building could be squeezed into that space. Millions of lives are tangled up together like the electric wires that supply the sometimes-sporadic power to the city. I forget what quiet sounds like in a place where noise creeps into every room like the mosquitoes that craftily find their way through the holes in the nets.
I miss quiet walks in the park, the way a tree can speak to me of the Creator. I miss hearing the silence speak. The clanging of construction, honking cars, ringing rickshaw bells, and barking dogs steal the quiet. They are the thieves of silence. The noise can drown out the sounds of your prayers if you let it.
***
I didn’t notice it until the third day I was here. The weekend was a blur of activity but when the house was finally quiet for one morning, four small children finally dropped off at school, I hear it...
CONTINUE READING AT SHELOVES MAGAZINE
Why We Gather. For SheLoves Magazine.
There were no ceramic pumpkins on the table this year to mark the occasion. We didn’t eat off of grandma’s white plates with the brown flower pattern around the edges that were just retro enough to be cool again. There was no playing in the yard after dinner, the crunching of autumn leaves under our feet. I didn’t hear the sounds of football games playing in the background, the predictable soundtrack of Thanksgiving.
There were crucial traditions missing, vital family members absent from around the table. Perhaps it was the most unconventional holiday meal we’ll ever have as a family. But still, those old familiar smells lingered in the air when the covers were taken off the foil trays. If you closed your eyes with the smell of sage and nutmeg hovering in the air, you could easily pretend we were in my parent’s kitchen.
Instead, we were bumping knees around a tiny table in the back of an ICU family waiting room. Thanksgiving Day was still a week and a half away but in two more days I would be on a plane to the other side of the world again and this would be another memory in this dream-like break from reality.
***
All that week my shaky smile answered the frequent questions of, “are you happy to be home?” The answer was too complex to unpack in the kind of casual conversation most people wanted to have after seeing me for the first time in a year. Those who knew me well enough to stop for the deeper story knew not to ask that question.
Happy was a loaded word. My arms were finally able to lock around my sister after days of weeping and longing to be near to her. I was grateful to be able to be at her side instead of 8400 miles away. My heart was heavy when the first tearful words we exchanged in person were about her husband’s second emergency surgery after his aneurysm less than a week before.
Home was a loaded word. I expected to feel strange driving for the first time again, seeing these streets that were so empty compared to the overcrowded ones I had become accustomed to in South Asia. But I easily navigated the roads as if on autopilot, quickly fell back into step with my old life. I expected to feel at home in the presence of my parents but I couldn’t completely relax when my family was fractured. I sat on the other side of an 11-hour time difference, waiting by the phone to talk to my husband and kids in the tiny snatches of time when both sides of the globe were awake.
***
This wasn’t the holiday any of us dreamed of. My sister said we’d cancel Thanksgiving dinner this year. How could we celebrate when days were spent in a waiting room and half of our family was missing?
It was the holiday God had given us though...
CONTINUE READING AT SHELOVES MAGAZINE
I'm Listening: how do you find gratitude in dark times? in the unexpected? how can you practice gathering/community in ways that will bring light into the darkness?
A Sojourner in a Foreign Land. For Sheloves Magazine.
The sound of the waves has faded into memory by now and the story of deliverance threatens to dissipate right along with it. Free from bondage, witnesses to miracles beyond belief, we thought we’d be settled by now. As our feet dig circles in the burning sand we understand why. We are still living in exile. When will we finally be home?
***
A year ago everything about our path was unknown. Jobs in one country had fallen through but we pursued opportunities in another, little known to us. We were selling our home without another yet in place. We didn’t know when or where we’d land. It was in the words of Exodus that I found courage, believing God would part the sea for us.
I recently sat down at the prompting of a spiritual director via an online retreat I attended. We were instructed to map the last twelve months of our lives. We were to mark the high and low points in our journey. That was easy enough to do. But then as part of this “peaks and valleys” exercise we attached a color to each experience, representing an emotion. In each moment were we angry, scared, excited, sad, happy, or tender towards God, others or ourselves?
My sketch looked like the plummeting hills of a roller coaster, the kind that makes your stomach plunge into your throat with each startling twist. The last marker, like the “you are here” on a map was a low point, a blot of black ink indicating fear. I realized as much about our lives is as uncertain as a year ago. We thought, like the Hebrews, that past the sea we would find freedom. We found more questions instead. Six months into life in a new country we ask: When will the language start to make sense? When will we stop feeling so lost, make a friend who really knows us, feel settled or fulfilled, have expectations met? How long will we stay? A thousand questions remain and home seems an unattainable dream.
In full color, all the tiny transitions of the last year became a map of my journey of fear and faith. We were prompted to ask, “When have I felt this way before?” as we looked at our experiences. The green of new life and excitement contrasted with the dark points of fear and I realized in both excitement and fear, joy and sadness, we’ve been living in the wilderness. Yet sometimes I found joy in the desert of the unknowing and others I retreated into despair. What was the difference?
From Pauper to Beloved Child. For the Mudroom.
I see them every day on the streets—the hungry. They stretch out trembling hands and plead for something to sustain them. A handout is not enough though. It may fill them for the day but they are back at the same bus stop the next morning, empty-handed and asking for more.
I’ve been that person for many days. I come to God with open hands and I ask for more of who He is, some feeling of His presence to carry me. I can’t count the number of books on prayer and contemplation I have read in the past few years. I begin reading with a hopeful heart. This is the one that will jumpstart my prayers,I think, that will tell me where my heart has gone astray in its connection to the giver of life. But I close the book in sadness. I don’t see any changes in myself.
The Furious Longing of God by Brennan Manning has been in my kindle queue for a while and I opened it on a whim last month. When I finished reading it I felt more like that pleading pauper than ever. I saw so much of myself in the flawed character of this alcoholic ex-priest, this man both attracted to and repelled by God. I knew his heart in the way he was never settled, always searching. But he had something in all his wandering that I didn’t—this ability to accepted God’s love fully and not get bogged down in his own failures and attempts to earn the love of the Father.
I wept with longing as I read: “Is your own personal prayer life characterized by the simplicity, childlike candor, boundless trust, and easy familiarity of a little one crawling up in a Daddy’s lap? An assured knowing that Daddy doesn’t care if the child falls asleep, starts playing with toys, or even starts chatting with little friends, because the daddy knows the child has essentially chosen to be with him for that moment?”
I yearn for this kind of trust in God’s affection for me. I want to believe that my attempts towards Him are enough, that in all my lack He is still infinitely pleased with me. I kept coming back to Manning’s words, devouring his autobiography in a few days and then launching into Dear Abba. I didn’t yet see any kind of shift in my prayers but I was so taken with this ragamuffin that I kept reading.
I was invited to a two-day retreat with a few other expat ladies in the South Asian city I’ve called home for nearly half a year. I longed for connection to someone in a place where loneliness is my daily companion. I came again with trembling and empty hands, not sure if there would be anything to fill them...
do you ever feel empty, like you can't find the connection to god that you seek? i'm at the mudroom sharing the shift in perspective that is changing my prayers...
An Argument I’m Willing to Take On. For the Mudroom.
“Are you going to break up with me next?” she cried in frustration and anger. That anger should have been directed completely at me but it was also pointed at God.
I will never forget the look on my sister’s face when I told her I had broken up with my boyfriend. Disbelief mixed with pain and anger flashed in her eyes. I had caused that. Four years older than me, she was no longer in high school but we were in the same circles and shared a lot of friends. We shared a lot in common—except my faith in Jesus. There were other reasons this guy and I parting ways but my sister got around to asking me if it was because he didn’t share my faith and I admitted that was partly it.
It always came back to this with us. I pushed (hard). She pushed back (harder). Disagreeing never accomplished anything except for driving a wedge between two people who couldn’t see the world the same way. I thought I could argue her into believing. I think she would have stopped herself from believing just to spite me ... and she would have been right.
I cringe when I think back to the headstrong and arrogant youth that saw the world one way and expected to debate others into the Kingdom of God. I wish I could change this part of my history but what I can do is learn from it. Unfortunately, one thing I’ve learned is the fear of disagreeing altogether.
I spent so many years mending the damage from my ignorance and never wanting to harm another, especially in the name of the Jesus who never pushed His way into anyone’s life. I have taken the backseat of being a learner and I am more comfortable there.
I still have strong opinions. Just ask my small circle of friends close enough to hear my real political opinions. These are things I do not air publically. The thought of doing so recalls memories of that unkind girl and makes my heart beat faster than it should.
Enter social media and the fact that I am a writer in Christian circles—both of which these days means airing opinions and feelings, writing them out for all to see. I would say I picked the wrong vocation if I had actually picked it. Ask most writers and they’ll tell you it picked them, that they can’t help it. But that doesn’t negate the dread I feel about disagreement (especially about matters as deeply personal as faith and the way we express it)...
DO DISAGREEMENTs make you sweat? does the fear of upsetting others making you shrink back (or charge forward)? join me as i try to find the balance between discord and dialogue, in real life and online. can we agree to disagree?
Always Listening. For the Mudroom.
It’s so much to take in—the cacophony of sounds that is never-ending in this place. There is never silence in our swelling, overcrowded city. The sounds are becoming familiar to our Western ears these days.
Allahu Akbhar. The musical nature of the call the prayer lulls the children to sleep.
Briing. Briing. We have come to expect the jingling melody of bicycle rickshaw bells. We hardly notice the yelping of the street dogs anymore, the clanging of aluminum rice pots in the early mornings. These are the sounds of life in the most densely populated city on earth. We feel our place amidst the noise, but a speck in this teeming sea of life.
But it is when I try to fill this space with my presence that I become even more aware of my smallness. The language I long to speak sounds like just another noise to my untrained ears. This language has existed in some form for thousands of years, descendant from one of the most ancient tongues on earth. This language is the pride of its people, shaped the very foundation and form of this nation.
Friends who’ve learned what feels impossible to me know tell me the first step of learning the language is listening, teaching your ear to recognize the rising and lilting sounds of Bangla. They call it the listening phase. For the first couple months full comprehension isn’t the goal, but recognition.
I hear a word that stands out in a string of melodic words, can recognize one or two and fill in some of the rest based on context. I know enough to get around town (sometimes) and talk to our house helper (about some things). I stumble my way through a sentence or two. A glimmer of joy passes through her eyes when she feels understood and our normal communication of gesturing and sounds becomes something a little bit more.
Dhonnovad. Thank you.
Onek Shundor. Very pretty.
Bideshi. Foreigner.
I recognize so little. Understand even less. I long for my listening to produce the fruit of knowledge, of separating noise from language. I want to cross the bridge into familiarity instead of everything feeling exotic, unknown, other. But it takes time. Lots of it. It takes discipline, work, repetition—and always listening.
I’ve been working for years to understand another language, the language of the Spirit. Silence. Communion with God. I’ve been struggling to separate God’s voice out of what feels like the din that is ever-growing around me. Sometimes I feel a glimmer of recognition. I feel progress in hearing, experience His Presence. Other times His voice seems as unrecognizable as the curls of the Bangla script to this bideshi’s eyes...
As I study a foreign language, I am becoming more aware of the need (and difficulty) to separate the noise from the language of God's Spirit. Will you join me at The Mudroom and share what you're learning about the work of listening...
We Will Not Be Shaken. Lessons from the Wilderness.
As the soaking rains seeped through our thick hiking socks, our boots felt heavier the longer we splashed through the South Missouri mud. We had been in the wilderness two days at this point but the stabbing cold made it feel much longer as we continued towards an unknown destination. We followed behind leaders who silently guided us, topographic map and compass in hand. As we slipped through the brush, not able to avoid the briars, we knew we weren't just off the trail. We were lost.
We had only gone a few feet off the trail, feet slipping in the mud, when we stopped as a team to discuss our best direction. Dark was quickly closing in and we weren't sure which ridge we were actually on. We needed to find somewhere to camp soon after hiking all day in the pouring rain. Packs that were already heavy grew in weight by the moment and none of us had dry clothes left. Empty stomachs were grumbling and our spirits were as drenched as the Ozark Trail we couldn't seem to find.
We backtracked up to the last place we saw the trail, decided to follow it until we could better determine where we were. One teammate stooped down to pull our anxious eight-year-old daughter close as we prayed. We asked God to stop the rain, to heal our littlest team members' aching backs and ankles, to continue to heal my husband, Lee, who had been unable to keep any food down in two days, to show us where to camp. We cried out—lost, wet, desperate.
We followed the trail until we saw a clearing, hopeful that it was the valley we were looking for but unsure we were willing to let down our guard yet and hope. As I tried to hold it together for the kids, my son's cries growing louder, another sound broke through my prayers for relief.
"I will not be shaken. I will not be shaken." Her tiny ankles were quaking and the rain wasn't subsiding. There was no end in sight. But as we walked through that clearing, my daughter was speaking the Truth out loud, holding onto His promises to be with her. Barely a whisper, she was clinging to them like they were her very life. As we walked we were memorizing Psalm 62:5-8 and the words we had repeated throughout the day were sinking deep into her heart: "He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I will not be shaken."
I wiped away my tears as I straightened my pack and kept walking. The two weakest and tiniest members of our group of twelve were teaching us what it meant to have the faith of a child, to cling to the truth and to trust that He will not let us down. As we rounded a corner in the forest trail, we heard the sounds of the river and the crunching of rocks under our feet. We turned our headlamps towards the sounds, sobs catching in our throats as we saw the fire ring on the beach. We were at our destination at last.
This is a tiny glimpse into the lessons I am still meditating on that I learned in the wilderness this Spring. We intentionally placed ourselves in a place of total unknown as we entered a two-week cross-cultural training that would help prepare us for the international move we've been working towards for over a year now. The first part of the training consisted of a multi-day (of undetermined length so that we were always wading through the unknown) period backpacking through the Ozarks with eight other people on similar journeys as us.
We were also unintentionally placed in another wilderness when our plans to move to one location in South Asia fell through and we were completely in limbo, trusting God to show us just the next step. The kids were talking about what they learned following our five days of hiking over 20 miles up mountains and across swift flowing rivers, building our shelters, building a fire and cooking over it, and so many more physically and emotionally stretching moments. Our daughter who saw God answer every prayer for healing, for the rain to stop, for guidance, said it made her want to pray more. "God provides even in the wilderness," she said. She won't understand the full impact of the seed that was planted in her little life for many years. But the courage her words of complete trust in His goodness are growing deeper places of faith in my own soul.
We are about out of the unknown. We have a new destination in South Asia and a goal to get there by fall. But we know there is still much wilderness ahead. We set out on the next leg of our trek knowing it is on solid ground that we step, declaring boldly, "we will not be shaken!"
Until We Are All Free. For Sheloves Magazine.
There’s been this growing sentiment in the world of social media and online writing over the past couple years. There is a feeling that whether we speak up or are silent, either way is losing. If we are vocal about an issue outside of our social context we risk being called out for a “white savoir complex” or jumping on the social justice bandwagon. If we are don’t speak up about a growing injustice in our country, then we are called careless and complicit in our silence.
Solidarity is a hard line to walk in today’s world. Do words on social media really mean we are standing with another anyway? They are just words, so easy to toss up on a screen without much effect to our lives. On the other hand, there are those that call us to speak up for them with the influence we have and there is a feeling we have to tread lightly, afraid to bring down ridicule, scared into silence. I think of a friend who has been the loving hands of Jesus to a local refugee community and who recently felt afraid to let her all-white community know of her passion.
Issues of justice weigh heavily on my heart and I’ve struggled to know how to use my words and my life to answer God’s call to be a peacemaker. Slavery, oppression of whole people groups, the needs of refugees—these things are more than token issues to me. I have lived in places where my neighbors live these realities, put myself in the way of these issues so that they had a face.
I have wrapped my arms around a beautiful South Asian child whose face beamed with joy despite his disability and homelessness. When I asked about him later I couldn’t even name the grief that washed over me when my friends told me he was missing, likely sold into slavery bringing a good price as a deaf beggar.
My heart has ached over the anxiety in my new friend’s eyes as I tried to teach her to make chocolate chip cookies. Everything in an American kitchen was foreign to her. She finally had to leave the room because, between the language barrier and not understanding anything in her new country, she was just too overwhelmed.
Yet I, too, have been afraid to speak out sometimes.
More and more I am convicted about the way solidarity is more than words, how we need to act on the needs we see. We can’t say we love if we hoard the cup of water we have access to while our neighbor goes thirsty. But we also can’t say we love if we don’t use our voices to speak truth into the dark places where justice is denied. Standing with someone means using our hands and our voices to support them. Solidarity means both speaking and acting.
One of my favorite quotes when I speak to groups about the slavery I have seen in South Asia and the ways we can stand in solidarity with those who are denied their basic human rights is, “We are none of us free if we are not all free.” An American poet named Emma Lazarus wrote these words. You’ve probably never heard her name though I guarantee almost all Americans, and many around the world know these words of her most famous sonnet, The New Colossus:
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…
I hadn’t heard of her until, wanting to attribute the quote to the right person in a presentation I was making, I looked up who said it and started reading about Emma Lazarus. I couldn’t stop...
Traces of Faith. {Deeply Rooted and Transformed Series}.
I am honored to have my voice included in the forthcoming release of Everbloom {Coming April 25, 2017 from Paraclete Press, Preorder now available}. Over the next four weeks, I will be journeying through the book's sections: Roots, Trunk, Branches, Blossoms. The beautiful thing about this book is that it is not meant to just be read. Become part of the story. Journey with me. Read along as I share a piece from each section, respond, and ask you to respond with me.
Through the pain, loss, beauty and redemption in these pages, you'll find freedom in Christ and the courage to embrace your own story. The women of Redbud know the importance of spiritual shelter, and how easy it is to feel alone and misunderstood. In the Everbloom collection they offer essays, stories and poetry: intensely personal accounts of transformation, and the journeys to find their own voices. Best of all, they invite you to join them, with writing prompts that encourage a response of honesty, faith and imagination. Accept the invitation: set out on the journey to find your own voice....
{Read} This Tree by Sarah Finch (click the title to read the excerpt)
{My response} Traces of Faith
I think about it all the time. What am I leaving behind for them? What am I leading them into? Am I messing it all up for them? Will they see something in my faith worth pursuing? Will they cling to God when the winds start to blow?
Becoming a mother brought into sharp focus that my faith isn’t all about me. My relationship with Christ is my own but it is lived out in community and it is on display for the world to see. As a writer, this reality is even more magnified. Each word I write is a window into the work of Jesus in my life. Am I guiding others towards a loving God or elevating self? It feels like a heavy responsibility sometimes.
But it wasn’t when I became a mother or when people started following my blog that my legacy started to matter. It started the moment I fumbled through a prayer to give my life to someone who gave His life for me. That’s when I was transplanted into a life of faith and my roots began to grow into the only solid ground that remains when everything else shifts around us.
I started this year gazing at the gnarled roots of the bonsai lovingly curated by the brothers of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit. God has brought to mind the thought of those trees often this year as I think about roots and transplants, as my family explores the international move we hope for. In the desert of transition this year I have prayed for deep roots that allow me to bear fruit:
But blessed is the man who trusts me, God,
the woman who sticks with God.
They’re like trees replanted in Eden, putting down roots near rivers –
never a worry through the hottest of summers,
never dropping a leaf, serene and calm through droughts,
bearing fruit in every season.
(Jeremiah 17.8, The Message)
My focus has been all wrong though. I have struggled to be the strong woman I want my children to see. I have begged God to make me more disciplined when my body is heavy with anxiety and I just can’t drag myself out of bed to meet with Him. I have cried out, God, why can’t I be that tree that never has a worry in the hottest of summers? Is my faith not strong enough? Are my roots not deep enough? I want to be stronger than I am. I want to be more consistent. I want to feel His peace and know that “quenching of [my] soul.”
I. Me.
When I think about my spiritual formation as a solitary pursuit, as something for my own benefit, my energy is depleted. My efforts fall flat. But when I focus on the seeds to come, remembering the traces of faith I want to leave behind, something shifts in me. It’s not about me. I will be cut down. My life is a breath, a vapor. But I can plant seeds that will long outlive me.
At the very foundation of the life I want to live is the benefit to others. In the Rule of Life God has been working out in me over the past couple years, these words of Robert Mulholland have been part every draft and version I have written: “Being conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of others.”
I don’t want my life to be about my growth for the sake of growth, for the sake of being a mighty tree others look at in awe. I want my roots to grow deep so that I can bear fruit for the hungry, so that my branches become shade for those who are weary. I want to grow strong so that when I am cut down mightier shoots may take my place.
I am asking God to shift my focus, off of my own growth and onto the growth of others because of my life. I am asking different questions:
Am I welcoming the outsider? Do I love the unlovable? Do I seek justice and mercy?
Do I magnify Him in my grief, show peace when the world was falling apart around me?
Do I guide my kids in Truth, point them to a crucified life, a life more about Him than themselves?
Am I allowing the work of faith that began in me to do more than take root; Am I allowing the work of faith in me to spread to others?
“Lord, help me leave a legacy of grace. Help me weather the storms that you have sent so that my words and actions will withstand the temptations and trials of this earth, so that I will not lose hope in your faithfulness. I pray that the work of faith you have begun in me will take root and spread. Amen.” –Sarah Finch
{Now share your story} Describe the seeds you will leave behind.
Join me for the rest of the Deeply Rooted and Transformed Series and watch for a giveaway starting on April 25. Win a copy of Everbloom!
Living in the Borderlands
The concrete floor and exposed pipe ceiling are, at the same time, a welcome sight and a dagger of grief and sadness through my heart, one that is deep in transition. It’s just a Starbucks, you might say. No, it’s a symbol of all that I am grieving and losing in my life right now.
I’ve been waiting for nine years (or 25 years, depending on how far back you want to go into my story) for this coffee shop to open. As I walk in its doors, the familiar sounds of hissing espresso machines and whiney folk music mingling in my ears, my heart is heavy.
For years I have said we needed a coffee shop here. My family moved to what was once a sleepy Georgia town when I was only ten, from just one county over. I’ve hated this place and cried when I left it, too. I’ve moved to other towns and even countries, but Georgia has always been on my mind, the sweet scent of confederate jasmine and gardenia following me wherever I have gone.
Not much but pine and red clay marked this strip of roadside when we moved here. The big intersection in town consisted of a corner family gas station and a single grocery store. Ours was one of the first houses built in the new subdivision going up just a couple minutes from that red light. We could have been the first settlers in the Wild West for how it felt to a skinny freckled little girl moving into this unknown and barren land.
Over the years we watched our little intersection change as the growth of Atlanta pushed into our south metro town. Concrete replaced the undergrowth as the road widened and big stores pushed that little family one out into the distant memory of the few of us who lived here “back then”. The field that held the annual haunted hayride that every person I knew attended is now covered over with stores and medical offices.
You will still always run into someone you know at any of the multitude of grocery and drug stores that dot the intersection these days, reminding me that we were once a small town. But nothing looks the same and every inch of land that isn’t built on yet is under construction. I’ve returned back to this place again and again—after college and then grad school, finally 9 years ago after living in the Middle East. This is where I grew from child to woman and where my own family started. It has been the only home my two kids have ever known. They’ve watched it change like I did. But now we’re the ones who are changing. Everything is changing.
I’ve loved coffee shops since before I drank the sweet nectar I cannot live without now. The introverted people person that I am, I can be alone in a crowd here. I can be surrounded by conversation and relationships happening around me but still be alone with my thoughts. I do my best thinking and writing in these staples of hip culture, these meccas for caffeine lovers.
Every Saturday morning I venture to the nearest Starbucks to have my “office hours” in which I do my writing and editing. I am usually the first one in the parking lot and don’t leave until the sun is up and my joints are aching from hours of being lost in thought and staring at a screen. I think I literally screamed out loud while I was driving past the new construction that is common on my way home from work. They had put up a Starbucks sign just minutes from my childhood home (that is only 3 miles from my current one).
Today as I sip my usual grande non-fat caramel macchiato I know I may only enjoy this long-awaited coffee shop a dozen times before I fly away from it for years. When I see it again, the shine will have worn off of the gleaming new espresso machines. Who knows how many stores will have closed down and new gone up? Will any of the tall Georgia pines still reach to the sky down this busy stretch of highway?
Just like this intersection, everything in my life is unfamiliar these days. I don’t recognize my own home anymore with most of our belongings packed and the new tile and paint that has readied it for selling. There is nothing routine about my schedule anymore as planning and packing crowd out enjoying the sunny spring days that are marked by the yellow pollen’s arrival on my front porch. We will move sometime this summer to a borrowed basement on the other side of town, right on the border between this county and the one of my birth. A few months after that, Highway 34 will be a just a recollection after our international move.
But it’s right now that I am living in the borderlands. Between wanting to go and longing to stay. Between roots and wings. Between a calling and a rootedness. Between everything I’ve always known and what is waiting out there to be learned.
It’s these places of push and pull that hurt the most. Transition is the feeling of not belonging anywhere. There’s pain in the knowledge of all we are leaving but joy in what I believe we will gain, too. There’s irony in the bittersweet knowledge that I’ve waited 25 years for a coffee shop to arrive in this part of town just to move away from it. There’s deep sorrow in the longing for my home while another home calls to me. This place is still firmly mine though I feel removed from it already.
In this borderland of goodbye I ache for the familiar but know if I let it get too familiar the separation will hurt too deeply. I know I shouldn't cling to Georgia as home more than anywhere else. I am trying to remember that nowhere in this world is ever truly going to be where I belong. "For this world is not our permanent home; we are looking forward to a home yet to come." (Hebrews 13.14, NLT)
You are home, Jesus. Anywhere in this world is a borderland between the now and the everlasting, between brokenness and wholeness. I ache for comfort you never promised me. Wherever I am, God, teach me how to live in this place that never changes—in the tension between holding on and letting go.
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