Tonight someone said something interesting. She, like me, is from the Great Plains, and one thing she misses about the Midwest is the ability to see for miles. She said the South can feel isolating, because all one can see are trees.
I suppose it's true in some ways. I don't miss the wide open spaces all that much, mostly because of my couple years in Bellingham compounded with my fundamental dislike for all things Midwest (except the lovely people there, of course). However, I do know what she meant. Rural Georgia can be overwhelming in its isolation sometimes. We're in a forest, and there are a few stores and restaurants, but the longer you're here, the smaller it all feels. Like going to college in Orange City, Iowa, really. I guess I've had practice at this sort of thing.
So tonight I met some friends in Fernandina Beach, Florida. It was so nice to drive different roads and see different things. It was nice to feel free again. And, best of all, there's a Starbucks in Florida (well, more than one, I suppose). Naturally, on the way home, I stopped. How could I not? This was my first Starbucks since August.
After getting my coffee, I had a 30 minute drive back to rural Georgia during which to think.
Starbucks reminds and probably always will remind me of Bellingham. It brings back memories of walks down beautiful trails to the Starbucks a few blocks from my house. It brings back memories of way too many coffees on campus. It brings back memories of those two years that changed me forever. It reminds me of the people I left behind, the people who I will always fondly remember, the people who took me under their wing and loved me unconditionally.
I'm a different person now than I was a few months ago. The person who left Bellingham was a person who had come of age, a person who had found her wings. The person who left Bellingham was heartbroken to leave the place that had represented some of the happiest years of her life. That wasn't all, though. The person who left Bellingham was, although confident in the tenets of her faith, disconnected from a relationship with the God in whom she claimed to believe. The person who left Bellingham was deeply cynical about so many things. The person who left Bellingham had allowed herself to stop following Jesus in favor of an intellectual exercise that allowed her to convince herself she was believing the right thing, and that believing was enough. The person who left Bellingham was lost.
Georgia wasn't always an easy transition. God was gracious to me, though, providing me with friends I connected with on a deep level the very first time we hung out three days after I arrived here. God was also gracious to me in providing me with a job that I loved enough to sustain me through the uncertainties of life in a place so far removed from the place I had come to call home.
And God started to change my heart.
A couple months ago, one of my best friends from back home and I started reading The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer together. I remember reading that first chapter and being so convicted. I remember agonizing over my life and my priorities, wondering what following Jesus even looked like and how to go about doing such a thing. And then God started throwing similar themes at me left and right. Sermons, articles, conversations with friends all pointed me toward the question of discipleship and what it means to truly follow Christ. Somewhere along the line I stopped reading The Cost of Discipleship. It came due at the library, and I had it through interlibrary loan, so I had to wait a couple weeks to get it back. When I picked it back up again a week or two ago, I realized how much had changed in my heart from when I first started reading it.
It is truly a testament to the call of Christ when I begin to take note of all the ways that God has transformed my heart and the way I think. A couple months ago I'd come home from work and proceed to spend the rest of the night watching TV on netflix. I don't really do that anymore. TV lost its luster somewhere along the way. A month ago I was getting caught up in work drama, allowing myself to be angry about this, that, and the other thing. A month ago I was agonizing over the disconnect between the Bible I read and the life I was living.
And I most certainly don't have anything figured out. But I can truly say that God has been transforming me and it is one of the most incredible things ever. I remember struggling for years with the role of emotion in worship. That struggle is gone, now, because my relationship with God is actually back, making the question of whether I should be emotional or not while at church completely and utterly a moot point. I remember struggling with theological questions as if the answers to those questions was life or death. I remember the thirst I had for God and the way I attempted to satisfy that thirst with academics and theology rather than with God Himself.
And then God brought me to this place. This terribly ugly, humid, God-forsaken (but really not at all) place where nothing but mosquitos live. And He gave me new life.
Yeah, God is good.
He is gracious and compassionate.
My cup runneth over.
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