A Sense of Belonging

I can romanticize just about anything. And I have.

I can remember visiting home last Spring, somewhat depressed and extremely homesick for familiar faces and dialects. I needed my dearest friends around me. I needed to sit around the kitchen table with my family or talk in the living room or outlast my brother in a grueling game of Scrabble. I needed hikes in the mountains and drives through forgotten scenic valleys. I needed late night heart-to-hearts with my sister and pep-talk coddle -time with my brother. I needed just enough time with my mother to remind me that my love for her is strong enough to reach across several hundred miles and states, and that for sanity's sake it's better off that way.

And those times, those experiences were absolutely wonderful. They were a salve to my aching soul. But still I wasn't ready to throw in the towel and come home. I knew I had to stick it out. I knew there was a bigger world I belonged in. If only I could feel I belonged...

Fast forward a year and my longing has taken on a different tone. I lie in bed in the room I occupied from the time I was 12 until I moved out of my parents' house and let the tears fall. I can't say that I am crying because I am homesick. I have built community in DC, and I can't imagine living anywhere else. I cannot attribute my emotion to my sister's impending wedding. He loves her. He really does, this free-spirited manboy who resents my attempt to define him in anyway (even as a free-spirit!), capable of crooning us all into hypnosis with his soft voice and guitar, yet recklessly charging up the skate ramp on his newfound rollerblades. I cannot explain the peace I have with this whole crazy situation. I cannot comprehend how happy they are, and I do not even understand how a most self-absorbed individual such as myself could be this excited. Especially given the circumstances. The Lord has answered prayers and he's prepared my heart for this somehow.

I recognize the roots of this new ache driving through the rundown town. I've seen the sights a million times before: the gossip cafe multitasking as a gas station and mini-mart, the downhome buffet in it's 3rd pair of ownership hands in 10 years, the vacant old autobody shop next to the tiny brick post office. The junior high girls laying out on the sidewalk, feet dangling over the drainage ditch bring back memories. Sarah and I used to run or walk or rollerblade our way around the square that makes up the neighborhood. Any given Friday evening or Saturday morning there we were, fantasizing about a similar batch of oblivious redneck boys I'm sure.

It's pangs hit once more at Ben's ballgames. The foreign-sounding dialects discussing matters most pertinent to their world: the dismal season, state rankings, new Mustangs and pimped-out old ones, the sale at the mall, and parent and student plans alike for the upcoming prom season. To be fair, political affairs receive a fair amount of negative attention (I'd challenge anyone to find a place where the topic does not incite anger these days). For the most part, I find myself an outside observer, at a loss for words and ever at a loss for understanding.

Those tears bring up a burning question: Have I ever really belonged here? I confess I can't remember a time when I did.

The lack of a sense of belonging stretches past a place to the time. This is a time in life where I am all but at a loss for a sense of settlement. The subsequent, haunting question that remains is this: Will I ever be in a place and time where I feel such a sense of belonging?

Something in my own restless, free-spirited heart answers in the negative. Perhaps I am destined to roam about the earth, about this life, without the burden and the blessing of belonging.

"You know, I didn't understand it at first, and I kind of thought you were crazy to just up and moved off," Jess reflected to me not long ago during a phone conversation. We had been talking about how the Lord had provided me with community and Bob and a dear church in this area. "And then, the other day I was thinking how that song really fits you, "Anywhere is Home."

Earthly wealth and fame may never come to me
And a palace fair here mine may never be
But let come what may, if Christ for me doth care
Anywhere is home, if Christ my Lord is there

The apostle Paul said that one of the most important lessons he'd learned from his vast experience in the Christian walk was to be content with his circumstances:

I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to be full and hungry, both to abound and suffer need.

I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.

Phil. 4:12-13

He says he knows how to handle his circumstances and he can be content with them; that he has been instructed in the appropriate manner he ought to behave.

I can think of no one biblical figure who was put in so many different circumstances, found himself in quite so many different locations, and I can't imagine he felt comfortable or happy or like he belonged in all of them. Pretty sure he felt out of place more so than not, from a purely natural point of view. Yet he was given the ability, nay the power to do whatever task he was chosen for, because Christ was his commissioner. And his reliance on Christ and all the hard, new situations it put him in only served to grow his faith and make him stronger.

I don't mean to raise myself to the ranks of the apostle, and I'd hesitate to say my relocation in geography, in career, in numerous life circumstances have been especially appointed by Christ. But surely, I can point to the very real ways he's been with me along the way, and I can take comfort in that fact if in nothing else.

Besides, at the end of the day, I'd rather experience a little discomfort from growing pains than die slowly of a comfortable, familiar and complacent existence.