It seems I started a fun little trend with my last post. I guess we are all just looking for the place where we truly belong. The place we really fit it, with our true selves, not the people we pretend to be — whether purposefully or not — or the people we wish we were. But who we are, really, under all the masks we’ve learned to wear through pain we’ve experienced in baring the Truth of our souls.
The question that’s dug at my mind as I’ve watched the flurry of comments at Alex & Niza’s place is why London? Or for that matter, why Nashville? Why not where I was, my home, LA, where all my friends and my community and my passions were? Why do I feel compelled to move, and move, and move again?
I could point to the fact that I spent the whole of my childhood doing just that. I moved every two to four years until I was in high school. I think I’m the only one of my siblings to graduate from the same high school I started. I went to four different elementary schools, three different ones in fourth, fifth and sixth grades respectively. Two different junior high/middle schools round out my edumacation — I moved from Northern California to Southern California two months before 8th grade graduation.
My sister and I often joke with each other about how we don’t have a "seven-year itch", we get the "three-to-four-year itch." An itch to move. Not so much move to a different city. Usually a move across town or to a different house will do just as well. When the move doesn’t happen, well, we get itchy. And just like a mosquito bite, we’re not satisfied till we get a good scratchin’ move done.
However, After having spent most of 2001 in one country, most of 2002 and 2003 in another and then the rest of 2003 homeless and carting luggage from one friend’s home to another till I found a place to park, I was ready for a very long stay in one place. My moving itch had been scratched raw.
But God — gotta love God’s buts — But God, in His infinitely confusing and crazy love, had other designs on my life. He made sure I wasn’t content in LA. Oh, I had my friends. I had my cherished home church again. I had my beloved City of Angels and Adventure. But I had no peace. I no longer "belonged". Like a puzzle piece that’s the same color but not the same cut I just didn’t "fit" anymore. And everyone close to me seemed to know it. My Life Group, the God-send of my life, the first time I’d found such an eclectic group of people who really did just fit like family, a Mosaic version of "Cheers" where everyone knew my name, in that soul sense of the phrase, they all knew I was restless in my spirit, that I wasn’t in the right place, though none of them wanted me to go.
All my relationships and yet no "belonging". I thought that was what belonging was all about, relationships?
God moved me to Nashville. Here I struggle with relationships. I’m not used to the Church Belt culture of everyone going to church yet so few being followers of Jesus, or the shallowness of spirituality or interest in spirituality.
Yet I Belong. Every fiber in my being shouts that this place was made for me — or I was made for it. I’m not sure which. Even when things have been screamingly painful, I loved Nashville. I never had a thought of abandoning it. I knew beyond knowing that I belong here.
It was the same with London. A very, very hard year came to a joyful and fulfilling end with my visit to that amazing city of lights. Even when every train I took was delayed and kept me from seeing most of the sites I’d planned, and my umbrella broke into three pieces as I emerged from my first underground stop, leaving me drenched in the constant rain of the day, I still danced under Big Ben’s resounding chimes and shouted praise to my Jesus for such creating such an incredible city. I belonged there. With everything in me I knew it. I belonged there.
I cannot define what it was, exactly, about London. I just felt like I was home. Finally home. It was one of the greatest Christmas gifts God has ever given me. Our time there, His and mine, was magical.
Just like Nashville. Magic. Magical cities. Where I belong. Inextricably, inexplicably, undeniably Belong. I am home.
So why? Why Nashville? Why London? My heart wants to say God created them just for me. Why not? He once told me He created the stars and flung them into space just because He knew I would spend my life staring up at them in awe and wonder.
I know life with Jesus is about more than just belonging. There is a mission He longs for me to accomplish. But I’ve found that mission is a lot easier to live out in the hardest of hard times when I am enchanted with the world around me; when I know I belong there, that I fit in not just in color but in shape.
Does that make sense?
What do you think? Do you Belong in your city?
