Long Overdue Introspection :)

Sure enough this isn’t my home. With every move I am even more convinced that geography has no bearing on feeling at home. Even in the place that I call home – Phoenix – I feely strangely at odds with my surroundings, always a nagging feeling of something important lacking. Here in Maryland, I feel like rolling around in the green that envelopes this landscape. I breathe in the air and it sits well in my lungs. This place is both invigorating and sedating all at once. I see the beauty and majesty of God all around me. In Phoenix, I revel in the dry pounding heat of the city. I love the distant mountain landscape, the open desert stretching for miles uninhabited. I see the wonder and stark power of our Creator. Yet, I cannot embrace it. My feet only cover small area at any given time, my eyes can only take in so much before my heart starts to ache. It’s as though my Father has left a gift at the doorstep… and then departed. But there in that gift is detail, complexity, affectionately made and a small reflection of the one who made it.

It’s easy to distract the heart and mind from this. It’s much too much easy to lose myself in social interactions, television shows, plain busyness of life… cleaning, planning, paying, driving, fixing… etc. Yet here I find a lacking as well.I have so many unanswered questions… Questions that can be answered certainly but not satisfiably. Or perhaps I am just so easily dissatisfied with any finality.

So here are a few of my questions… questions that I ask time and again that don’t seem to have any satiable answer. What is the point of friendships? I realize this is a highly customized concept. Friendships are what people make them to be, but this can vary quite dramatically from one person to the next, I suppose, based on their own particular needs and desires. If that is true, then the likelihood of two people finding a perfect friend in each other is rather low and obviously explains the many dramas and quandaries experienced in that social interaction. To find a near fit almost always feels too good to be true, often enough questioning and doubting the intimacy of these relationships conversely leads to many problems and difficulties. It’s kinda funny.

A bigger question that sits in my mind is one of location. Why be anywhere? I mean I know I have to be somewhere, so why be where I am now? Why not somewhere else? What is it that holds me here? Or takes me there? Bottom line: what’s the motivation in location? Naturally I will follow my husband where he goes. But what leads him where he goes? Sometimes it seems as arbitrary as the wind. Is the idea of a better job a good reason to move? Is the idea of being near family an intelligent reason to move? Geography? Politics? Schools? Taxes? Culture? Friends? …. I do have an easy answer to this question. Go where God leads you to go. But then again, how do you know where that is? And beyond that (as I found it easy to believe He wanted us here in Maryland) is a plaguing question: how long are we to stay? I know that may illicit a chuckle from some… How do I determine whether it is we that want to leave and not God? Doesn’t He put the desires in our heart? And beyond those supernatural gut instincts, what do we go on to make this decision? Are we merely out here to see what we left (Lord knows I didn’t need to be taught this)? Were we sent out here to stay for some unseen purpose yet to be revealed? I struggle with this idea. I hesitate to see myself here in the future (a long time problem with me anywhere I am… 2 years in our house in Gilbert seemed short and likewise eternal). I hesitate to see us moving again… for I fear that we have been so well entrenched in this habit, we may learn to never sit still.

Above and beyond all of this is this deep desire to do something meaningful. While I well know this exists in most people, I absolutely cannot sink myself into anything that seems trite. I am all too keenly aware of worldly pulls: vanity, greed, self-serving, works righteousness… weighing my success on productivity. I am a barrage of battling wills. I refuse to get caught up in buying nice stuff and decorating (money better spent elsewhere, not to mention the vanity factor), yet vanity gets me anyway… as I am mostly ashamed of what our house looks like and worried what people will think. I refuse to push my meager energies to have a productive show for my day… yet feel really worthless about how my days are spent wishing I could have some proof to validate my existence. And I wonder about my internal motivations… am I lazy? Unambitious? Afraid? I am absolutely afraid. Afraid of not being good enough. Afraid of failing. Afraid of trying something and then not doing it well and taking it too hard. Afraid I’m missing what I’m supposed to be doing…

There are short answers to these questions. God’s word is enough to satisfy the hungriest heart. And I often am brought to tears by His amazing love and the seemingly unending ways He speaks to me in new ways through His word. So why the plaguing questions? Why can’t I just rest easy in today and know He is in control, that He has a plan? I don’t know.

Right now this is what I know. I miss my family so much it hurts. I miss the amazing friendships I made in Arizona. I want my husband to be happy. I want the best for my kids. I want to feel fulfilled (and I am mainly so by being a traffic controller). I want feel as though I’m living exactly where God wants me to, how He wants me to. Won’t I know when that happens? Or will I?