Funny when you realize the dream wasn't ever really the
dream...
What do you want?
What will make you happy?
These are questions that have been bouncing around in my
heart for quite some time now. Sometimes
it's my husband asking, because he is this legitimately amazing person who would
actually move heaven and earth to purchase, do, be, make happen whatever it is
that I want, if it is within his power to do so, and sometimes even if it's
not. I'm not sure how many dads look at
their future sons-in-law and say, "Good luck with this one," but mine
did. I am high maintenance...
apparently...
But more often than not, these questions have been
internal. I have been asking them
myself. And I haven't been able to come
up with very good answers, if I'm honest, which I try to be. But there is a common theme. Over and over and over again, I have said
that what I want, what would make me happy, is stability. And I really believed it. But then I lived through the past 19
months...
In October of 2013, I was thrilled to be going
"home". After a 12 year journey
that took us through 5 states, 9 houses, 6 churches, and more heartbreak than I
ever thought I could live through, we were finally going to have that
"moment" when you realize that God really loves you and has set aside
this particular second in history just for you, to show you how everything has
worked together for good, how it was all necessary to bring you to the specific
place for which you were born. Breathe
in, breathe out, the trouble is over, the years that the locusts ate are
finished, you can stop wandering around in the desert, because this is why you
were created. You... have... arrived.
It was the dream.
This was everything I ever wanted... in 1997.
Here we were moving into a little house just yards away from
the first home we ever owned, from the house we walked away from in 2001 to
begin this adventure. That house long
since burned to the ground, but this one is eerily similar to such a point that
I sometimes forget the dining room, laundry room, and master bedroom are not
the ones from the original house. This is what our lives would have looked
like if we'd lived in the same house all these years...
Here we were taking a staff position at a church that is
small, but not too small, that has a calendar with no space for another event,
that has blended worship and canned music and a youth group and children's
programming for the kids. This is what our lives would have looked
like if we had landed the elusive youth pastorate at a desirable church all
those years ago and just hung on...
If Phil had become a course of study guy, trading an
extensive education for ordination the quick and easy way, never questioning,
never learning new things...
If I had avoided school altogether, settling in with the
homesteading families and living under the umbrella of submission, never really
seeking the call God had for my life...
If the kids had embraced the safety of mediocrity instead of
flourishing in their spiritual formation and talents, missing out on the beauty
of nonconformity...
We could have done it, too.
We could have been those people. But we never would have been us.
And chances are pretty good we wouldn't have known you. Yes, you, particularly
if you are one of the hundreds upon hundreds of people we met because of the
choices we made over those 12 years.
What a loss... for us... for you... for the world... for the Kingdom...
What I wanted at 17 is not what I want at 35. Let me be clear. I don't
want this. I don't want this, but I
am so thankful that God allowed us to experience it, because I might have spent
my entire life wishing for something I didn't want if these months hadn't
played out like they have. I don't want
this, and I know now that it's not what we were created for. I don't want this, I was wrong, and it's OK.
May I return, briefly, to these haunting words that have
changed my life forever? "A cloud
of missed possibilities envelops every beginning: it is always this beginning, this universe, and not
some other. Decision lacks innocence. Around its narrations gather histories of
grievance: what possibilities were excluded?" (Keller, 2003, 160). Oh, friends, there are possibilities that
were excluded, but I am less and less convinced that histories of grievance are
worth grieving, for had we made different decisions, had we chosen a different
beginning, a different universe, we would be grieving you. We would be grieving us.
I don't have to wonder anymore. I have seen things in the past few months
that most people never get to see.
Sometimes I feel a little bit like I am in The Twilight Zone, or maybe
I'm George Bailey, because I honestly believe I have been given the opportunity
to see what life would have looked like if we'd made different choices. There are still moments of letting go that
are difficult, but overall I know we did what was right. There's no staying here, though. Turn page, time for another adventure...
L.
