What's Up, Pilgrim?

"This world is not my home. This life is not my own."

The Spirit keeps bringing that to mind this morning. Not because the Lord is asking me to give something up, exactly, I just feel incredibly restless. I sense that there is a change coming on and one chapter or another will close soon. I can't place what it is, but it makes me quite un-easy. 

Perhaps it is that my friend cluster has shifted for the umpteenth time since moving here four years ago. Maybe I am afraid of it this time. While it should be so well rehearsed that the transition should go smoothly I think it has gotten rockier the more it happens. 

I once thought that when hard things in life are repeated you somehow grow calluses against them and are stronger for the next time around. Perhaps it is not the skin getting thicker, but a wound being dug deeper. Not that I feel like I am in agony or turmoil or anywhere close to broken or depressed, I just really dislike having to close out on things that were good and fun and brought joy to my life.

I think as my school chapter comes to a close, I'm a little distressed as to where I shall be brought to next. I shall, at some point, need to further my education so as to legally practice counseling. (If the Lord wills, of course.) But I also just want to serve the Lord, so perhaps I shall end up in another country spending my days loving God's children. Or maybe I shall find a church to settle into and work full time in ministry there, or maybe I shall take up a different sort of cross and enter the work world and be called to love my co-workers and authorities as the Lord stretches my heart to comprehend His love for His people more deeply. 

I can be excited for those possibilities. I AM excited. But I have been so blessed by fellowship and encouragement in my friends these last several months that I'm quite saddened to the fact that as my heart heals, things will change. 

Maybe it is that the Lord wishes me to give something up. Maybe I am being called to give up the comfort of friends who stay and don't change. Maybe I am being called to a life less constant and concrete and steady. Maybe I am too comfortable enjoying the predictable routine of the life the Lord gave me. 

I realized something the other night when I was telling some of my school friends about my Kalona adventures. I've felt some whip-lash in the interactions with the different friend groups and came to realize a little of why this is. 

With my school friends, when we get together, we ask each other about our weeks and days and exchange stories only from the recent past. With my Kalona friends, they tell stories of their childhoods and growing uppings and neighbors they've known since their earliest memory. I think my heart envies them just a little. To have such a concrete anchor in the ground, to be so constant, so steady, so sure. Life for them is one consistent timeline. I'm sure, that while they can probably divide it into chapters, all of them are in one book.

My life must be a series of books. With random scatterings and chapters more distant. I'm not complaining. I've quite enjoyed the adventures on which the Lord has taken me. And perhaps it is the thought that I have friends who will not change and will not move and will continue on in there well anchored life, I will be the one to leave them. After all, it was being a traveler that brought me to know of their existence and while I have stopped in to hear of their adventures as children and their continuing adventures now, there will come a point when I shall only have the memory of these friends rather than them in person. 

Perhaps it is that I'm realizing that I really don't know much of the childhood stories of my close friends.   I've caught bits and pieces here and there. But mostly, to each other, nothing existed before college. Our existence now consists of the daily struggle with school and peers and homework and stress. Even how our summers went are unknown to each other, unless we truly ask, which we don't. 

We don't because we don't have time. Our lives are too fast paced. We barely have time to ask each other  how the day is going and listen for the response before jumping on to the next thing or running off to the next class. 

Or maybe it is that we fail to care of others beyond how they bring happiness to our own little lives. If the question after their day is merely so you might be entertained briefly at their response, than we, as a body of believers could very well be failing at living in a community. 

Granted, it's not entirely true. I live with three women who love the Lord and have done life with me the last several years. I shall continue on doing life with them for as long as the Lord shall allow. I just hate to think that friends come in seasons and not necessarily life-time editions. 

I probably sound more depressed than I am. I'm not broken, like I said. I'm just a little off about it. But I suppose it all comes back to a point of surrender. This world is not my home, Lord. Therefore I shall go outside the camp and meet you there. After all, I have learned that my city, my place in life, is not an enduring one. No, I am looking for a city that is to come. 

A city as constant as the One who made it. Some day, I shall live in that city. It shan't be dirty and corrupt like the one in which I now live. One where people tell their full stories and we shall have all the time outside the world to listen to them. Yes, some day, I'll be livin' in a big ol' city. The Lord's city. 

Until then, I'll be obedient to the next chapter.