Well, it is about that time again. Transition. Time to pack up our stuff. Time to change scenery. Time to change routine and tasks and mindset (to some degree). For the past three years, my life has been one season after another, each drastically different than the one before, lasting months rather than years.
One of the hardest things about living life is being a consistent person. I tend to fight very hard to please the person standing right in front of me, to fit comfortably and securely into the setting I find myself in. But what happens when that setting changes? What happens to my identity when a new person and a new setting slides in front of me?
Like most things, it comes down to balance. I want to be someone who can adapt well but who can stay true to himself in the midst of those adaptations.
I talk a lot about ‘seasons’ when describing the different settings I am moving into and out of. It is an ok analogy, as far as analogies go, I guess. Seasons change, the setting is different.
Maybe it is better to think about these changes as mediums. Because it is hard for me to remember my summer self when winter hits. Everything looks and feels so different. It is a whole different world, in some ways. And it makes it real tough in my parka with snow to my blue earlobes to remember that I am the same guy who was sweaty wearing sandals and an outdated Hawaiian shirt six months earlier.
When I was a kid, I loved making forts. Who are we kidding? This morning, I loved making forts. I think of all the things I used for making forts – blankets and pillows, giant boxes, furniture, my dad hunched over in an arch. The changes were real and joyous. I missed the pillows when I got to the boxes, but the boxes had their own kinds of joy. Most importantly, moving forward was never hard to remember. I was the same. My goal was the same. In a lot of ways, joyous though they were, the different kinds of tunnels in my forts were peripheral. It was the traveling that mattered. It was the living that brings true joy.
I struggle all the time with comparing one medium of my life with another – ‘if only community could look like it did when I was in Place A’ or ‘I can’t ever worship as well as I did in Place B’. This is devastating to discipleship, joy, and the fullness of the human experience. Boxes can’t be as soft as pillows, but they allow you more space to jostle around.
Moving through life is hard. And we tend to fall victim to the lie that pulling up roots and starting over means gutting ourselves and reinventing. But the roots are just scenery. I am who I am. The Lord is who He is. It is hard to say goodbye and hard to adapt to the unknown. But it shouldn’t rob us of our identities. Who we are should not be so wrapped up in what we have or where we squat that we cannot exist in any other setting. They are all just mediums. We’ve got to smile and crawl our way, as best we can, through whatever obstacle is laid out before us.
Anything that is not thankfulness was birthed from a lie. I sometimes take life too seriously. I’m too afraid too often. I fight to find the right medium, sometimes, instead of fighting to be myself in all mediums.
I miss the mediums I’ve passed through. They scraped up against me and helped shape who I am. And I look forward to the mediums ahead. Teetering somewhere between nostalgia and hope is acceptance, the place of deep acknowledgement where the sentiment ‘God is good’ has no condition.
