As I enjoyed my short vacation in Georgia, I took some time to think some thoughts worth blogging. 🙂
This was a thoroughly refreshing and encouraging vacation for me, visiting friends, sharing our lives with one another. I saw my old coworkers from AIM, 2 World Race 06, and 3 WR Jan 07 folks (including my good friend Tana), and the couple with whom I lived during my last 7 weeks in Gainesville before the Race. (Catherine and Spencer)
I knew when I left Des Moines that I would return with fresh perspective and an encouraged and empowered spirit, and I am.
Throughout the last four months, since I have been home, I have been noticing subtle changes in my heart, attitude and perspective, and though it shouldn’t surprise me, sometimes I still marvel at how gently God has worked in me to change.
One of the perspective changes I noticed this week is how I look at my life, and I realized that I am truly content. I miss living in Georgia, the beautiful hills and forests with curvy, fun to drive on roads; I miss the people and community in Gainesville and at AIM; the small town feel with everything I need, but a big city close by if I get the urge to visit.
But this visit didn’t cause me to wish that I lived there, as I know it would have in the past. For a number of years, I have been looking for the next best place to be. I believe that I have followed the direction of the Lord, but I wonder sometimes if he allows/leads me somewhere because I would always wonder what was out there otherwise, and I begged. 🙂
This time, though, I feel empowered to go out and find/create the community that is waiting for me in Des Moines. I am confidant that I belong ‘at home’ right now, and I have never been so confidant that visiting elsewhere hasn’t caused me to be discontent with my current placement.
For nearly all the years that I have NOT lived in Des Moines, I have been determined that I wouldn’t come back here to settle down. I had my reasons, some understandable, some irrational, and though some of those thoughts haven’t fully changed, I felt the call of God to come back home, and I can’t argue with that. I tried. And failed. 🙂
I remember back in the mid summer last year, while in Gordon’s Bay, South Africa, this call to come back home became undeniably clear, and I tried bargaining with the Lord…. ‘I’ll give you two years there Lord, then move on…’ The Holy Spirit challenged me then, asking if the vision he has given could happen in two years, and the answer from my own mouth was ‘not really.’ After a couple weeks of this prayer discussion, I gave in and gave the Lord an ‘indefinite’ amount of time in Des Moines. There are people here in whom I will invest and love, and a long term vision (I will explain in a future blog), and to be really honest, I don’t want to leave in the middle of something that God is doing. I don’t want to leave a calling undone.
So, I will stay until He says to go, which may happen down the road, and it may not. But right now, my heart is settled and content here.
