Home Sweet Home

I apologize, but what follows is a completely emotional brain dump. I just needed to write it out somewhere...

There's been a lot of changes going on in life these past few months.

New job.
Wedding.
New role as wife.
New husband.
This means a new roommate.
New apartment.
New stuff to unpack.
New routine.
New city.
New church campus.
New community.

To be honest, I've been a complete wreck through all of it. I love things to be "just so". But not just so different that nothing feels comfortable.

Nothing has felt like "home" for months.

I've been incredibly stubborn and mad with God. The quickest solution for me is kick, scream, yell, and then curl up and cry and hope that somehow we can move back to our old town, our old community, our already established group of friends. I've been coping by crying. Like almost every day. I really have no idea why I am blessed with such a good man who is willing to put up with all of this. I don't deserve it, that's for sure.

Thankfully wise best friends say good wise things that stick with you. "Jake is your community now." "God has you right where you are for a purpose."

I've been walking through what feels like an endless and lonely dessert...longing for something familiar ...or someone familiar ... or something to drink. Luckily, I have a very real and very good God who promises to sustain me- even when I close myself off to Him. I'm starting to realize that all of this fear and loneliness and anger and sadness is really just symptom of my selfishness and unwillingness to trust. I need to start trusting. I just do.

So God gave me some concrete reasons from scripture to trust Him yesterday. He put me here. In this city. In this specific apartment. With this specific community. For a specific reason. And, even though all these changes have made me curl up in a ball and hide away from His goodness, He is just pouring it all over me weather I like it or not.

These verses that I read in a blog post yesterday seriously just changed everything:

Acts 17: 26-28:
And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for

“‘In him we live and move and have our being’;

as even some of your own poets have said,

“‘For we are indeed his offspring.’

There are not even words to express what comfort I find in this passage. Here I am barely working on feeling my way toward God and finding him... but all the while He is actually not far away at all. In fact He is so close that He is orchestrating these specific circumstances on my behalf. I just really don't want to waste such a good gift anymore.

Yesterday, I felt like I was home for the first time in a while.

Home Sweet Home.