The True Less-Than Life

I live mere steps from my mother’s home and less than a mile from the house I grew up in. I lived in the same house my entire life until I moved out for college. But my freshman dorm was six blocks away from that house I grew up in, and I now live even closer to the campus than before. I taught and coached at the high school I attended, working under the teacher that had inspired me to teach math, and coaching alongside the coach that shaped me all four years of high school. I attend the church in which I was dedicated as a baby. I now assist with the college program that I played for which means I am again working with one of the coaches I played under. Besides trips and vacations, and a brief study abroad in England, my life has spun inside a small radius for over thirty years. Thirty years...

And part of me fights it.

No doubt, I am someone who loves tradition, who thrives in the “known”. Even as a child I dreaded any sort of change. But the other half of me is a dreamer, with dreams of exploring, of wandering, of adventuring, and walking into all sorts of unknowns and allowing them to change me.

You could split the current me right down the middle. Half of me is not surprised that this is the life I am living. After all it has been playing out this way for thirty years.

But the other half is completely stunned: How am I still here? How is this my life? When or what is going to move me?

From the outside looking in, I am someone who is never leaving this place. I have roots and have planted roots of my own. My husband and I are busy raising two little ones, he pursued a career here, we just moved into our new home, we have an incredible network of both family and friends in walking distance from our front door, I am involved in our church ministry... we are planted right?

But from the inside it feels like I should just be soaking it all in and should actually be prepping for when God asks us, asks me to change. When our life SHIFTS.

Because I never believed my entire life would be spent here. But somehow I look at my life and that is exactly what I see playing out.

I know it is easy to romanticize change… we can make it into a grand adventure of new and exciting around every corner with that special late day glow like the lighting in the best movie scenes. We forget that it would also involve grey ugly days where nothing feels normal, where we question so much, or take out our frustrations on the loved ones around us. When we can feel more lost than excited. More exhausted than exhilarated. I think all of those things would be true if I moved away and even more that I cannot imagine since I have never experienced it.

But my refrain has always been: if I truly felt God was leading us somewhere else, I would go. I could walk through the dark and the hard and the terrifying if I knew deep down, this was God’s will for us. That would anchor me and help me weather the unknown storms.

But as silly as it sounds, it was not until this last year that I had an even more unsettling epiphany:

You say you’re willing to follow God anywhere.

But are you willing to follow Him if it means staying, right here… forever?

I immediately dismiss that thought as ridiculous. We will leave. At some point. One way or another. It is going to happen so we should prepare. But then I realize I am not actually answering the question, I am not even facing it:

Stay? Forever??

God that cannot be your plan. That just cannot be it.

That is just so… boring.

A boring life. A predictable life. A life that is not filled with NEW.

And if I am honest, I feel like that is not a worthy life. Like it is somehow less than all the other ones that my friends are out there living. It would have to be a life that fundamentally misses out on all sorts of experiences, and therefore it must be lacking, so therefore it must be less than.

A less-than life.

There it is. The hidden fear under all the layers of avoiding the question.

But if that is what God planned for me, would it actually be lacking?

In my head and my soul, I know the answer is no. I know His ways are not our ways, and that He works for our good. And I have seen over and over again how His way is truly the BEST way. But my heart is still lagging behind.

It is so much easier for me to imagine seeking after God in the big changes, the “faced with so much that I end up clinging to Him” phases. But running after Him when circumstances stay stable? When life is carrying on comfortable enough that your battle becomes a deeper restlessness? That is harder for me to face, harder for me to fight.

I do not want to be refined that way. Pick another way God, this one is too boring…

it’s too unexciting,

it’s too challenging,

it’s too HARD.

Oh the irony…

Not wanting to be refined by what we find ourselves in. Asking God to switch it up. Asking God for another way.

I’m finding in many ways, it is so much harder for me to stay.

To stay in a position of surrender every day.

This day dreamer can focus on all the questions and imagining that I become lax at the discipline of giving myself for His glory in this given day.

To continually ask what He wants me to do here, to do now, and how to live for His kingdom from this exact home where I am.

My mind, my soul and heart all align when I realize my greatest fear is the true less-than life: the one not fully living each day as a gift to be poured out as an offering to Him.

Oh God, open my eyes

Forgive me for all the ways I am blind

Breathe life into dead places

Breathe flames from cold coals

Start here with this heart, Lord

This silly, fickle heart

Refine it til somehow

It beats more like Yours